The Best Possible Outcome
by somethinglikeidk
Summary: Time has never been a straight line. In fact, it acts more like the parting branches of a tree, in a forest of trees. In the case of time, the branches can have very different configurations but there is a limit to the configurations that can occur, when you can only go as far back as one point. So what happens when everything you stem from is based on corrupted and rotten roots?
1. Chapter 1: When Life Gives You Lemons

**The Best Possible Outcome**

Prologue:

Time has never been a straight line. In fact, it acts more like the parting branches of a tree, in a forest of trees. In the case of time, the branches can have very different configurations but there is a limit to the configurations that can occur, when you can only go as far back as one point. So what happens when everything you stem from is based on corrupted and rotten roots? Obviously the branches won't fare much better, because sometimes, you are just too late, and time stops for no one.

She has come to this grave conclusion, her tree, her dimension, is utterly rotten. She has exhausted all the options, but no matter which course is taken the best possible outcome will never happen, because her dimension is meant to fail.

Unless...well maybe that will work. It will mean the end of this world and everything that every existed here but it might just give them a fighting chance. This time, maybe, she'll finally reach "The Best Possible Outcome".

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Chapter 1: When Life Gives You Lemons

咲

Saku Haruno was born March 28th 5 years before Naruto's birth, to Mebuki and Kizashi Haruno. Her birth was a surprise to both of her parents. When the doctors told them that Mebuki's mild abdominal pains were actually labor pains, the couple refused to believe it. There was not even an inkling of Mebuki being pregnant. After all, she never showed any symptoms, nor a belly, and Mebuki had been so sure that she had her period normally. The doctors told them that although seemingly unlikely, it was possible for her to be pregnant. Regular but light bleeding was often confused with a period, some mothers don't show, and not all pregnancies have symptoms. What really seemed to strike the doctors as abnormal was that Mebuki's labor pains were so mild. Mebuki looked towards Kizashi, so much doubt clouding her eyes. Kizashi gave her a strained smile. "We'll figure this out, don't worry." He said as he held her hand.

Despite their terror at suddenly being thrust into parenthood, when Mebuki held Saku, she felt as if it was the first time she had breathed fresh air. When it was Kizashi's turn to hold her, he didn't hesitate, even covered in blood Saku was magical, like a miracle, so unexpected but welcomed. They named her Saku because to them, she was like a flower that bloomed on a day when the trees where bare. On a day they didn't even know they would be expecting a child. In that moment, only Mebuki and Kizashi realized how dire it was for Saku to be born.

As the weeks flew by and their love for the baby grew to expanses they had never experienced before; Saku started to grow some hair and open her eyes for longer. Kizashi never doubted that Saku was their daughter but when Saku's hair started to settle to a bright pink and her eyes to a spring green, their was no denying her parentage. She was a perfect mix of the two.

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At first, Saku-chan was a well behaved and bubbly infant, but a few weeks before her first birthday, the child became inconsolable during the night. Although she was still happy throughout the day and often spent her time napping, playing and attempting to walk and talk she often spent her nights wailing and crying for no apparent reason. Kizashi and Mebuki spent long nights trying to soothe little Saku back to sleep, before trying to speak to a professional. Unfortunately, said professional did not find anything wrong with the child, even after some extensive tests. She was as healthy as she could be and was even showing signs of chakra coil development. The physician had explained that this meant she will probably be able to easily control her chakra early in life. The physician also made it known to them that their child was developing her motor control and simplified speech much faster then normal. The few cognitive tests that were done for her age weren't the most comprehensive, but it was obvious that Saku was ahead of her peers. This didn't come to much of a surprise to the two parents. They knew their child was exceptional, or at least not the most normal considering how she was born.

Since there was nothing physically wrong with her, and they had nothing better to go on, Mebuki and Kazashi figured it must be nightmares. They will just had to deal with it somehow. Kizashi and Mebuki never found out the cause of their daughter's nightmares, but strangely it did coincide with one particular event.

The Third Shinobi World War had started.

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As time passed, Saku's first birthday came and went. The nightmares didn't stop but they became manageable. Now she would only wake once every month in a crying, desperate state in which she would only sleep when between her parents. Saku would never remember her dreams upon waking up, but even at the young age of one, she knew that it involved a lot of suffering.

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The day Saku turned two was a very happy occasion at the Haruno household. Saku went to bed that night the happiest she ever remembers being. Her parents spent the whole day with her! They went out to eat at her favorite food place that had the yummy desserts and she got the one toy she's been wanting since forever. She also got to go to the library for the first time and couldn't wait to read all the colorful picture books she brought back. It was literally the best day ever!

Coincidentally, that night she also had a nightmare. When she woke up in cold sweat and covered in tears and mucus, she clenched her jaw and cried as silently as she could. This dream was not only vivid, but a sad, miserable, nightmare. Maybe because it was the first she had ever remembered, but if that was the case, she could only feel glad she was too young to remember the others. She didn't sleep that night, instead she decided to try to read the books and attempted to ignore the red eyes from her dream. Saku will never forgot this dream, because it was the first time she realized that her parents couldn't help her feel safe anymore. It was what made her realize how weak and vulnerable she was. The body she was in, the feeling of blood and life leaving her, watching people she couldn't see but knew she loved with everything in her being, killed before her eyes, that felt more real than she was comfortable admitting to even herself. Once the sun rose she finally gave into exhaustion and slept for a few hours before Mebuki called her for breakfast. This will soon become a habit, Saku spending most of her nights reading what she could before falling asleep from exhaustion. During breakfast, Saku asked to go to the library again. Mama had said yesterday it's where you can find answers to things you don't understand.

Saku didn't understand why she felt so weak.

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She quickly got her answer when she started to notice that every story seemed to have a hero and a villain. The villain was usually really strong and evil while the hero, well it depended but for the most part they were nice. All the heroes in the books could do all kinds special things, even if they couldn't do them right away. Her favorite stories were the ones where the hero wasn't very strong at first, but they become strong, and that gave her hope that maybe she could do the same.

So at the tender age of two, the day just after her 2nd birthday, Saku told herself that she would be strong. She will be strong for mama and papa and herself. If she didn't feel safe, then she will have to work hard to protect her family and herself.

Unfortunately, she also had no clue how to do so. After all she was only two. How can a two-year-old be strong? She's still having issues with her motor control, speech, and can barely read and write! These things didn't really become apparent to Saku till she opened a thick 'big kids book' from the library, thinking that it must have the answer on how to become stronger. Saku realized that she can't read a little more than a few words and then promptly tripped and banged her head on said book. Mebuki came running after that and Saku realized she needed help. But at least for this, she knew just who to ask. "Mama, tweach me read book? Pwease?" Mebuki wasn't surprised by her request, not in the least, and happily agreed.

With that out of the way, Saku now had to figure out how to move right so she wont suddenly trip if she was to handle said books, that, she was so sure would have the answer on how to be strong. So she did what any little girl would do. She asked her dad for help, since she'd never seen him fall or trip before. Much to Saku's annoyance he laughed and then explained that she just needed to practice more. "Tweach me papa, pwease!" Kizashi reflected on her comment for a moment.

_'Well I was planning to teach her how to defend herself eventually, nothing wrong with starting __a few __key habits __a little __early right? Guess we can start with __lots of__ running and playing.'_

Saku spend the rest of her 2nd year of life learning to read and coordinate herself. Saku's parents where happy to note that her nightmares had pretty much up and disappeared the day she started her new routine. They didn't know that Saku just stopped going to them for comfort. She loved her parents, so she didn't want to bother or worry them anymore. This was something they could do nothing about. Her dreams did get better though. Saku found the more physically and mentally exhausted her body was, the better she slept. Saku also found it was strangely easy to pick up things like reading, writing, speaking, and movement, almost as if she had done it all before.

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By the time Saku's third birthday was only a month away she already had an advanced reading level, having lost her lisp after spending so much time reading both by herself and with her mother. She was also happy to note that she rarely ever fell or tripped and could even land a few decent play punches on her dad! She got good at avoiding projectiles too, ever since she started 'playing' with the neighborhood kids. Saku if anything was an optimist and an opportunist. The fact that the neighborhood kids like to pick on her for her hair, huge forehead, and advanced vocabulary by throwing rocks at her, gave her the opportunity to learn how to avoid things. At first like any child she was confused and hurt both emotionally and physically and of course her parents worried for her but after Saku asked them the basic questions she turned it into a positive experience for herself.

"Is what they say true?" "Why do they not like me?", "Am I strange?". Mebuki and Kizashi confidently stated that there was nothing wrong with her, the bullies were just looking for someone to pick on and since she was more special than them, they were acting out in jealousy. "You're not strange Saku-chan. You are yourself and very special to us."

Saku was able to overcome the initial fear of not only her bullies but also the nightmares, with the love and acceptance of her parents. Their love made her brave. She didn't have time to be scared anymore. No, she had to get stronger, if not that dream might come back or worse come true.

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The nightmares came back with a vengeance the day after her 3rd birthday in the form of a deformed man with red eyes. His red eyes were different from the ones she had previously dreamed of, but no less scary. The dream had a lot to do with boulders and the ground giving out. Although, terrifying, it confused her more than anything, because it wasn't as, well, 'straight forward' as the last one. The last one made it painfully clear how weak she was. This one just made her anxious that the ground would give out, but something told her, that wasn't the only thing it was supposed to warn her about. Plus, it didn't make sense. Growing up in the village hidden in the leaves often had her interacting with nature. The earth, the forestry surrounding the village, the ground which she stood and practiced playing ninja on had always been a faithful companion which she felt a keen connection with. After what seemed like such a long time she was honestly surprised she was having such bad nightmares again. Maybe it meant that she wasn't trying hard enough, so does that mean she should start doing more? She had long ago realized that she had lost her trust in her parents' ability to protect her because one of her dreams. Does this mean she can't even trust the very ground she stood on anymore? And don't even get her started about trusting other adults. Her parents where honest with her but the trust in other adults became rare after her mother read her that book about a kidnapped child. Her mom had even told her that she should always be wary of strangers. So now this dream was telling her she couldn't even trust the ground she stood on?

Saku was confused but her parents were at work, as they had consistently been, more often than not, as of late. With nothing else to guide her, she went to the library, as she always did when she didn't understand something. When she got there, she wasn't sure what to look for, and her earlier questions still needed to be answered. Now that she thought about it, she still hasn't exactly figured out how to get stronger yet either. She decided to ask the shinobi that sometimes ran the front desk of the restricted part of the library. At first Saku had been weary of him. After all he was a little scary with the peg leg and sling on his arm, plus, he was a stranger and an adult, and that was a bad combination. He had always been nice to her, though, and always answered questions that other adults never answered honestly. He was truthful and honest, so he wasn' t the worst. Just in case, Saku made sure her mama approved. Too bad he refuses to tell her his name, always saying he won't be staying here for long.

"Um...Shinobi-san can I ask you a question?" Saku had to stand a little farther from the front desk and raise her head up high to meet the shinobi's brown eyes.

"Oh, it's you again. What do you want now? I already told you, I can't let you in this side of the library." He said slightly exasperated. Every day she came up to him and asked him questions, most varied depending on what subject she was reading on but almost every day, without fail, she also asked if she could go read the restricted scrolls. He had to admit she was a smart, well-read kid for being so young and although he was impressed, he is not willing to break the rules for her and let her see any of the Genin scrolls just yet. Considering the state of the world right now, he was doing he a favor.

Meanwhile Saku took her time trying to find the right question.

"Do you blindly trust that everything will be ok, Shinobi-san?"

The shinobi knew they were in the middle of war and figure the child will learn this eventually, so he answered honestly.

"I don't kid. For shinobi, life rarely ever goes our way. We learn early on we can't trust in much but ourselves."

Saku nodded "What about the ground we stand on?" At his confused expressing Saku added "Are you allowed to blindly trust in the ground we stand on?"

He gave her a pained expression, remnants of a memory not too long ago. "What's brought this on kid? Were you somehow attacked by an Iwa shinobi?" At her confused face he sighed in relief. Such a young child shouldn't have to come face to face with war, much less Iwa shinobi this deep in the village.

"What do you mean Shinobi-san? Aren't all shinobi, shinobi? And does that mean I can or can't trust in the ground we stand on?"

The shinobi looked exasperated again and took a deep breath.

"I don't know what to tell you kid. In the end, it's up to you what you want to put your trust in. Shinobi differ based on what they trust. Leaf shinobi follow the ideals of the Hokage while other shinobi from other villages follow and trust in their Kage. As for trusting the ground that we stand on, I really don't know what to tell you. Some shinobi are paranoid and won't, but, to be fair, those shinobi tend to live longer. Still you can't just not trust in anything or anyone either, that's too lonely of a life."

"Then how does one decide what and who to trust in?" This time Saku had the exasperated face.

"Experience I guess."

Saku still didn't completely understand what he meant by experience, but she decided that she trusted and loved her parents. Then she remembered that that wasn't completely true since she didn't trust them to protect her from the nightmares anymore. She trusted her parents but not blindly so if that was the case..."Shinobi-san is it ok to trust in someone or somethings but not trust blindly or completely?"

"Yeah...that's probably the safest route to go. Everyone has at least one secret they aren't comfortable sharing, even to their most precious person, but what brought this on? Is there someone bothering you kid?"

Saku shook her head "No, nothing like that! I just had a weird dream last night and I couldn't ask my parents about it because they're at work."

Shinobi-san laughed thinking she had a different kind of dream, one more normal "Kid you should probably stop reading all those crappy romances, they're probably getting to you. You do know that they don't literally have the ground cave in under them when their lover is with some one else right?"

Saku's face turned red and puffed up. She felt highly insulted. Of course she knew what a metaphor was. What was she supposed to do? She just finished the last textbook in the non restricted area last week! If she was going to reread books then of course she would reread all the adventure and romance ones. She enjoyed them a lot the first time, thank you very much!

"Well I would read different books if there _were_ any left for me to read, but there's no way I'm rereading the textbooks." She huffed. She initially thought the textbooks must have had all the answers since they were so huge, so she not only carefully read them all, but even took notes. But when they didn't tell her how she was supposed to get stronger she felt so cheated.

"No way you read all the textbooks. There were at least three huge medical texts in there." He said in disbelief.

Saku huffed again and crossed her arms the image of a perfectly upset child "Yes and I thought that using the Yin nature of chakra to simulate rapid cellular division at a microscopic scale was both brilliant and dangerous considering where the energy to do that would have to come from, the imbalance left over in the body, the complexity of the process, and the unfortunate limit to that division since cells can only produce a certain amount of copies in one life time before said copy or copies are not good enough to function as needed."

Saku smirked at Shinobi-san's dropped jaw. To say he was amazed is an understatement, he knew she was smart, but he wasn't even sure what the hell she was saying. After all it wasn't every day that a three-year-old would try to prove that she read, or even could read, a medical textbook.

"Why the hell would you even want to read those textbooks anyway? If you're that bored you can always go out and run or play or do whatever you kids do nowadays"

Saku looked ready to yell at the man. He just looked at her slightly amused. She was not doing this because she was bored! She was doing this because…

Saku's whole demeanor changed, the shinobi quickly lost his amused face. His facial expression sobering up to something more serious in response to the look in Saku's eyes.

"I...I have to figure out how to get stronger so I can protect my parents and myself. I...I thought those books would have the answer so I read them all, really carefully, but they didn't have an answer."

The shinobi looked at her sadly. "There's no need for you to be strong kid. That's what the adults are for. They're the ones that are supposed to be protecting you, not the other way around."

Saku looked at him sadly her smile wasn't genuine.

"I love my parents. If there ever comes a time were we get attacked, I don't want to sit there and watch them die. And I don't want them dying to save me either. So I have to be strong."

There was silence for a little while, before the shinobi sighed.

"Tell me kid, do you know how to use chakra yet?"

Saku looked up at him and shook her head. "I don't know how. There aren't any books that go farther than chakra theory. I might be able to, but I don't know what I should even do with it."

"Makes sense. All chakra practical application materials are in the restricted side of the library after all. Only accessible once one was of rank or in the academy. Can't have just anyone getting information after all."

Shinobi-san paused for a minute and smiled_. 'There was no way this pink haired munchkin really understood all that stuff and even if she did she won't be able to use it anyway, __but if she's serious abou this...__'_. There's no harm in teasing and testing her is there?

"Alright kid, come with me let's see if you can put what you've learned to practice."

So, Shinobi-san took his break and they headed outside. He led her to a clearing not too far from the library near some boulders and a lot of big trees surrounding it. Once they were at the center of the clearing, he smirked and proceeded to walk up a tree. Saku couldn't help but look on in pure amazement. How did he do that?

He walked up the length of the tree and then jumped back down and laughed, amused at the face she made

"Well kid, if you're serious about getting stronger, you have to at least be able to do that."

"How did you do that?" Saku gasped in amazement her green eyes opened as wide as they can go.

"You tell me kid. How about this, if you get it right, I might even let you sneak into the restricted section."

Alighted by new found determination, Saku thought about it. From what she saw and understood chakra was concentrated between the feet and trunk of the tree. The big mystery was more how something is even able to stick to a tree. She got closer and examined the trunk. There were no obvious markings indicating that chakra was embedded onto the trunk, so he wasn't making cleats with his chakra. Wait maybe he was but they were just too small to see. She touched the trunk and closed her eyes in concentration. No weirder than normal groves, but smaller than needle thin spikes of chakra were still a possibility. A squirrel suddenly came out of no were to her right. She squeaked and jumped a little, eyes suddenly alert and scared. Ignoring Shinobi-san's constant and loud laughter with a small pout Saku went back to thinking. Seeing the squirrel reminded her some animal books she read. There where creatures that could walk across surfaces by using weak intermolecular bonds or using material surface tension to their advantage. Keeping those two things in mind Saku had a good idea on how the technique worked so she smiled at shinobi-san. Ready to receive her prize she excitedly explained her logic"

"You concentrated a specific amount of chakra to your feet. Just enough to simulate the necessary weak intermolecular bonding needed to hold your specific weight against the tree's. Too much chakra and the bonding breaks causing a release of energy that would probably harm the tree. Too little chakra and the bonds don't form at all. For a better grip the amount of chakra is evenly distributed along your feet in a manner that allows for the most surface area to weight ratio. Depending on the material the chakra distribution changes but because a tree is sturdy and has a fairly standard non-changing surface, an even distribution of chakra along the feet is likely the best."

Shinobi-san was giving her a weird confused face, does this mean she's wrong? She could have sworn this was a correct answer.

"I have no clue what you're saying kid. How old are you again? Two?"

"Hey! I'm three"

"Like it matters, speak simply! Why don't you just try doing it, then we'll know if you really got it or not."

Saku pouted. She'd never used chakra before, so she knew this part was going to be mostly trial and error. Why couldn't he just tell her if she was right or not? With a grumble and a glare or two sent towards Shinobi-san she tried to think back to what chakra theory she had read. Finding her reserves took her a good 30 mins. She then tried to move the chakra, but it wouldn't even twitch. After another 10 minutes with no results, she tried to ask Shinobi-san how to do it, only to find he wasn't there anymore. In his place was a takeout bag and a note.

**Figured you'd be here a while so I got you some lunch. You know my shifts at the library. Come get me when you can do it.**

**Good luck kid.**

'_Well he was no help at all but at least he got me some lunch.'_

After 2 hours of failed attempts of trying to coax the ball of energy out of her Saku decided to take a break and eat the lunch Shinobi-san left for her. She laid down on the grass and relaxed for a bit once her belly was full. _'I'll have to go home for dinner eventually. I hope mama and papa are back by then.'_ The wind ruffled the leaves of the tree she was under. Subconsciously, she reached her hand out to the leaves. _'If only calling to my chakra was as easy as picking a leaf off a tree.' _

Not two seconds later Saku smacked herself in the face. Of course, she couldn't mold her chakra right, she was trying to mold the whole thing! She tried to mold her chakra again, this time she imagined unwinding the ball at her center until she felt herself moving a long thin piece rather than the whole ball. Saku then sent the strand to her arm and down to her hand allowing for an even distribution of chakra to envelop her arm and hand. To her surprise when she opened her eyes there were a few leaves stuck to her arm and hand. She tried shaking them off but no matter how erratic the movements the leaves stayed on. She was ecstatic! It was a small amount of progress, but it was something! With renewed vigor, she set about trying to do it again. After a few more test runs on separate parts of her body she was going to try going up the tree only for her to lose consciousness instead.

By the time she woke up again Saku had ended up staying at the clearing far longer than she intended and she hadn't even tried walking up the tree yet! _How frustrating!_ But before she could even attempt to get up the tree again, she had to make sure she didn't fall unconscious and potentially hurt herself. She was right in thinking it probably had something to do with how much chakra she was using. _Just great, another thing I needed to figure out how to do! _That's when she realized it was already dark! Saku quickly got up and raced home. _'I hope mama and papa won't be too mad at me!'_

Even if she was disappointed that she didn't even get to try it and even if her mom might scold her, Saku still ran home with a happy, fulfilled smile on her face. Mebuki did scold her too, but it was ok, tomorrow she would master the tree walking technique.

It wasn't until bedtime came around that she remembered her most recent nightmare. _'I'll just have to be stronger. Strong enough that I'll be able to trust that the earth won't kill me or hurt my parents. Strong enough to trust myself to protect my most precious people.'_ Saku knew she wasn't anywhere near that yet but she promised herself she would be, some day. So Saku decided that she will trust the ground she stepped on for now and she also decided to trust Shinobi-san, _at least for now_.

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Saku soon found out her biggest issue was not figuring out how the technique worked nor drawing and molding her chakra but more how low her reserved seemed to be. After falling unconscious two more times she finally asked Shinobi-san why she kept fainting. It seemed like no matter how litle she grabbed she will still end up unconscious. The shinobi took her to the hospital, just in case, and they learned that she was using too much chakra. Given her age she had appropreate reserves, but they just weren't big enough for her to be able to do much of anything. She was warned that chakra exhaustion like this was a big no-no and that she could potentially get herself killed. Shinobi-san tried to stop her at that point, but Saku figured 'nothing ventured nothing gained'. But she did start to be a bit more careful about it, and the shinobi kept a closer eye on her. He even lent her scrolls from the restricted section that helped her learn how to expand her reserves. It took her about a week or so of practice and a lot of extra "secret" research on how to best expand her reserves before she was able to bring out chakra repeatedly without fainting. It took a second week to get enough chakra to cover a hand in chakra for an hour, and a third to cover a foot for three hours. Once she was satisfied that she could call enough of her chakra she had to practice distributing and maintaining a flow correctly along her foot. Saku decided to spend a month honing this skill until she could distribute and maintain a flow along every part of her body. At that point, calling chakra to different areas at certain rates became second nature. She didn't even need hand signs to help funnel her chakra. In fact, she never even using them to begin with. After she was confident in her control she finally decided it was time to attempt to walk up the tree. So, she excitedly went to go get Shinobi-san, just in case she fell and needed someone to catch her.

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_'I shouldn't have trusted.'_ Tears mixed with blood were falling from her face as she looked at the almost corpse of Shinobi-san. He had used his body as a shield because she was here. He was dying because she was weak. How did this happen? This morning everything was normal; she was happy, she was learning, she was going to walk up the tree, and she was so excited to show Shinobi-san that she could do it. She should have never trusted the ground she stood on. She should have never cohered Shinobi-san to come to the clearing to show him. She should have never trusted Shinobi-san's words. As the ninja with the stone headband was about to deal the finishing blow with the boulder her body moved on its own; it got in the way, it bled, and she roared in fury. As she felt her chakra surge, a dream came to mind of blond hair and boulders crushed to dust. It felt almost as if it was a fleeing memory, but like the chime of a bell it left as quickly as it came. She hadn't meant to do it but something in her broke through at that moment and her small fist smashed through the large bolder. The resonating sound was nothing short of an explosion and her vision blurred. _'I'm going to die.' 'I wish I w__ould have been __stronger. __Mama, Papa, I'm so sorry__'_ And with that last thought darkness consumed her.

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Saku's first conscious thought was _'Dying hurts'_ followed by _'its loud too'_. Her eyes opened to see a white ceiling _'Death feels and looks a lot like waking up from a nightmare…Wait!' _Saku shot up to a sitting position, only to groan, wince, and fall back onto the bed. Her parents were instantly by her side.

"Saku!" When she felt her mother's embrace she finally realized she wasn't dead. "Oh, thank goodness!" Mebuki cried on her shoulder. As her father kept asking her if she was ok, or if anything hurt.

"I'm...I'm alive." Saku was still in shock. Suddenly she remembered shinobi-san and her senses kicked back into gear. Focusing on the threat at the foot of her small cot.

Before Saku had woken up, Kizashi had been talking to a person with a mask at the foot of her bed, Anbu, she would later come to recognize them as. Saku didn't know who he was, but he scared her. Saku grabbed both her parent's hands, grip tight as she motioned them away from the man. Green eyes and childish features showed their distrust and apprehension. The masked man felt too much like the shinobi with the stone headbands. Mebuki frowned and Kizashi's eyes grew sad, but Saku was distrustful and she was not going to hide it. The masked man decided to stay at the foot of her hospital bed.

"I need you to tell us what happened. Immediately."

"She just woke up!" Mebuki spoke up. The masked man interrupted before she could continue.

"Considering the fact that an Iwa shinobi team somehow made it through to the inner confines of the village, we cannot allow this child to go on unquestioned. We are in the middle of war. One child's discomfort is not worth the death of many." There was a moment of silence.

"Who are you?"

"Anbu, my team and I recovered you and brought you here."

Sakus grip on her parents slightly lessened.

"Hospital?"

the Anbu nodded.

"How long was I?" Saku rasped. Her eyes were unfocused; she barely looked conscious. The small bit of adrenaline she felt upon waking up quickly dissipating. Her head was in pain and every part of her body was uncomfortably sore, but she was alive. "Less than an hour." He responded.

"Is Shinobi-san dead?" Saku's eyes darkened, she knew, but asked the question anyway, because she desperately hoped she was wrong.

"One of the Iwa shinobi is dead, the other two are in custody." She shakes her head and takes a deep breath.

"Is Shinobi-san from the library…Is…Is he alive?" Tears started to stream down her face.

"No."

It physically hurt her to hear the response. Tears were now accompanied by sobs. When her breaths could no longer keep up with her cries, she started to hyperventilate. Her parents holding her close and mumbling words of comfort onto deaf ears. _'He's dead. I…I couldn't…but they...__they__ need…speak!'_

It took a while before she could form words again.

"They…came... ground." Saku tried to compose herself before trying to speak again.

"Three. They came out of the ground." her voice was weak but steady.

"The thing they did to come out of the ground, it, it has a time limit. They didn't stay underground very long, I don't think they can. Shinobi-san hurt one of them badly, so he tried escaping underground but didn't get very far before he came back up."

Saku had to stop to compose herself again as she let out another sob.

"Shinobi-san lied to me for the first time today." she whispered as the tears kept trailing down her face.

"He said, "we'll be just fine I'll take care of them." It was three against one and I was nothing more than a sitting duck." She clenched her hands.

"I knew we were going to die, but I trusted Shinobi-san anyway. I was scared for Shinobi-san. I was no help to him, and we were surrounded. I...wasn't strong enough to do anything" Saku couldn't even raise her voice above a whisper without it cracking. Her features contorted to something so painful that Mebuki and Kizashi couldn't help but cry silently with her and encase her in their arms.

Between her sniffles, hiccups, and shortness of breath Saku continued.

"Shinobi-san was very strong and brave...He took them all on. At one point it even looked like he might win."

"One of the stone headband people was injured and the one that went underground stopped moving after Shinobi-san kicked him in the stomach. The last one was a lady that kept hurling boulders in his direction. I think they realized their friend was dead, because after that they started to aim all their attacks at me."

"The injured one threw all kinds of weapons and I remember the lady threw smaller bolders, but they didn't touch me because Shinobi-san, he... protected me." Saku looked away from everyone in the room, staring down at her hands.

"If I wasn't there he would have won, but he protected me. It cost him his life. I wasn't fast enough to avoid it, so Shinobi-san had to save me. He told me that we'll be fine again. I knew it was a lie again, but I kept hoping that maybe..." the sobs came back but this time quieter. Her head hurt from crying, it felt like she had no more tears to cry but they kept coming.

"I kept trying to convince him to run with me. I told him he wasn't allowed to leave me. The injured one started throwing even more knives at us, so he used his own body to protect me again. He was bleeding so much." Her voice was breaking, and she was a sobbing crying mess, but she needed to finish.

Saku had to take a moment to calm herself and her hiccups.

"The last thing I remember is the boulder. She was going to kill Shinobi-san. I don't remember what happened, but the boulder exploded. After that I couldn't see right. I was sure I was going to die. In the end, I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even protect myself. Shinobi-san died because of me." Saku finished and lowered her head again. Her parents at her side tried to comfort her but nothing could stop the hole forming on her heart.

"You broke the bolder."

Both Saku and her parents looked up at that. Surprise written clearly on their faces. Saku eyes quickly turned somber as she whispered under her breath.

"I don't even remember doing it."

"_It wasn't enough...I wasn't strong enough.__" _

"What you were doing in that area to begin with?" The Anbu asked, forcing her attention back to him. The Anbu noticed her eyes had a faded spark behind the haunted look. "I had read all the books that I could at the library, so Shinobi-san was teaching me how to do this tree walking trick with chakra. That clearing was the place he first showed me, and the place where I had been practicing using chakra for the past month. I thought I was finally going to be able to do it, so I went to get him. When we went to the area those people came."

"And were you able to do any tree walking?" he asked more out of personal curiosity.

Saku shook her head "I never even got the chance to try. I went to get Shinobi-san in case I fell while trying."

The masked shinobi nodded, accepting her account. He made to leave but suddenly turned back to her.

"If you wish to be strong enough to protect those dear to you, I suggest going to the academy. Remember this experience and grow stronger from it, don't let it end you." With that he left. The Anbu had seen the end of it, how she crushed a boulder with her bare fists and then promptly fainted. Their dead comrade's body folded over as if trying to protect something, or in this case someone. Thanks to the surprise and noise of Saku's sudden prowess, he and his team were able to quickly regroup and take down the two enemies, after landing a few lethal hits with kunai at the seemingly dead body of the last Iwa shinobi, of course. With the two Iwa shinobi in interrogation, this little tidbit about a jutsu that lets them move underground will give the interrogators something to start on. Honestly, he was more surprised that the child was able to describe the situation so well. Originally he had been given the task to interrogate the child as more of a punishment, he didn't expect to get any useful information out of it. It was suspicious. He took a quick stop to get more information on the child.

A few days later Saku's story was confirmed. With the information Saku had provided, they were not only able induce pure memories, but they learned valuable information about the _two_ techniques used to infiltrate the village. The good news was that the second technique that they used to try to locate important bases had partly failed. The jutsu was supposed to identify main bases and normally unvisited sections of the village by the quality and quantity of the trace chakra in the area. Apparently, Saku had a good enough handle on her chakra that she left little to no traces of it in the surrounding area. This made the clearing seem like a generally unvisited location, and with it's proximity to a hidden Anbu base it was a perfect spot. They had planned to infiltrate the base when there was no activity and set up traps. The other technique had a time limit to it, like Saku thought. The time limit depended on how much chakra a user had. It was pure luck, or maybe just plain unlucky chance in Saku's case, that she and that shinobi happened to go there when they had to come above ground. Unfortunately, that was also the only information they got out of the prisoners, before they exploded. It was a good thing Inoichi realized it and got out in time, but it was a close call. The Anbu had examined Saku's files as an extra precaution against her being a spy of some kind. According to her medical file, her speech and overall development isn't very far fetched, based on the cognitive and medical exams that were done when she was just one year old. Saku wouldn't be the first genius to come around in the hidden leaf, but they were rare. It wouldn't hurt to keep an eye on her, especially if she can become an asset to the village. He made sure not to mention that she was able to break a bolder with her bare fist, just in case they decided to throw her into something before she fully developed her true capabilities. War was no place for children.

_I'll keep an eye on her __for now__. __We don't need any more children dead because of this war. __Especially not one with so much potential._

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It turned out that physically, Saku was mostly fine. Just a little banged up. Not much but a few bruises and scratches here and there, most of the blood wasn't even hers. The real issue was her chakra reserves. They were significantly developed for someone her age but there was very little there at the time. The doctors and nurses wrote it off as normal levels since she was a three-year-old child, and they had more important things to worry about. So she was released from the hospital almost right away.

After being released, Saku spent the next weeks training herself harder then she ever had before. Her parents had refused to enroll her in the academy early. They reasoned with her that she was still too young. But more importantly they weren't willing to lose their child so soon. Especially after they almost actually lost her. She was only 3! Saku threw her first real tantrum at that. It took another nightmare in which she was so easily killed, after drawing attention to herself, that she realized that they were right. She wasn't strong enough yet. It will only bring bad things to her family and herself if she tried to go to the academy early. They didn't want to lose her, and she didn't want to die but she had to get stronger somehow. So she had resorted to serious taijutsu training. Countless hours of continuous nonstop physical excersies. Sometimes she only stopped when she couldn't move anymore. He parents were not happy about that, and would force her to stop and take breaks. Saku would end up useing the time to read more into chakra and human anatomy. She wanted to try to do the bolder breaking on purpose. She would also often even sneak into the restricted section of the library whenever the new librarian would go to the bathroom. She always felt bad about it, but at the same time, she wasn't keen on potentially losing more precious people, or dying, anytime soon.

Saku refused to fall into depression, refused to sit and do nothing. She won't become that useless weak person that could only bleed out as her loved ones were slaughtered right before her eyes. But she also realized that she needed some help and direction, like how Shinobi-san did with the tree walking. She asked her parents to get her books on Kata forms, chakra practical applications, and medical books that where not at the library. Kizashi was hesitant at first but the haunted look in Saku's eyes made him agree. He then proceeded to help her with the Kata and chakra applications as best as he could. Her mother helped her with the reading when she didn't understand things with similar persuasion. In a sense they understood what their daughter was doing. They also understood that the best thing they could do now was support her. At least now she wasn't trying to get herself killed by going to the academy while the village was in the middle of war or by over training herself. She was too young to experience a life or death situation, but it happened. They knew if they restricted her too much it will do more harm than good. All they can do now is help pick up the pieces and support her in any way they could.

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Months into her self-training she felt she was doing better. Molding her chakra to her will has become easier and easier with the more she practiced walking up trees, roofs, ceilings, and pretty much any solid surface she could find in the village. At the beginning she had been very careful going up the tree in a nearby forest and even put pillows on the ground so that she wouldn't hurt herself. He dad right by her side in case anything happened. Once walking up solid surfaces had become second nature she had started water walking. Her mornings became dedicated to doing runs around the village, strength training and practicing kata forms. She had to start eating double what she normally did to keep her energy up. With her rigorus workouts she even gained at good amount of muscle. During her more kata practice and time spent at home, she would train her mind trying to understand the medical jargon in her new books until she didn't need to ask her mother or look in a dictionary. The medical text ended up helping her work out the most efficient way to exercise to optimize her strength without compromising her speed and agility. Despite all her progress she did not attempt to break boulders yet. It wasn't until weeks after the incident, that she vagely remembered what she did, but even then, something was off about that moment. It was as if she wasn't herself but still herself at the same time. The more she learned from the medical texts the more she realized how lucky she was that day. If she had sent too much chakra to her hand she would have damaged her chakra pathways and coils resulting in never being able to mold or harness chakra again, too little and she would have died.

Her busy schedule kept her tired most days which was good since her nightmares had become repetitive. The boulders and the red eyes were haunting her. Sometimes Shinobi-san was there too. Some nights she couldn't stand to close her eyes, instead she spent her time practicing meditation. It was in an attempt to increase her chakra reserves, but she also found it calming to do in general. Mostly though she worked hard until she was too exhausted to dream.

But then it got to the point where even deep exhaustion no longer helped her sleep at night. No matter how exhausted she was they would haunt her. It was still the same dreams as the ones that she had dreamed before Shinobi-san died, the same red eyes and hard earth and stone dreams that had her questioning what and who she trusted and had her judging her ability to be anything more than a weak child. The same ones that she couldn't bear to see after Shinobi-san's death. The same ones that turned out to be some kind of sick prophecy that she should have paid more attention to. She cried again.

As she meditated late into the night, Saku realized something _I'm never going to forgive myself for Shinobi-san's death. Never._ But she was getting tired of crying. If she had time to sit there and dream and cry, then she had time to put in more training. Just like that she changed her sorrow to determination, because she still had precious people to protect. From that point on whenever she would experience a nightmare she would push herself harder and harder. She made sure that she went to bed more than completely and utterly exhausted both mentally and physically by the day's end.

Her parents were worried. Saku knew. She heard them talking downstairs one time when they thought she was sleeping.

"I worry about her Kizashi. I worry so much, there must be something we can do for her maybe take her to the doctor again? Have someone try to help her through this, anything!"

"Mebuki, you know we are in the middle of war. Even if we did find someone to help her, at her age they wouldn't give her the priority that she needs and deserves, you know that."

"Then how can we help her Kizashi! We can't just sit by and watch our daughter suffer! I can't remember the last time she did anything besides train and read her books. I can't even remember when she last truly smiled." Kizashi hugged his wife.

"You know, Saku is a strong girl. She's every special and very intelligent for her age but she still comes to us about her troubles when it becomes too much. Any other child faced with what she experienced would fall to depression and shut everybody out, but she hasn't. Instead she's determined to grow stronger to protect her loved ones. She's not shutting us out and instead has asked our help. Did you know that she promised me that she would protect us no matter what?" Mebuki stared at her husband in shock.

"Really that child!"

"And she's determined and equally stubborn to do so. She got that from you." He chuckled and Mebuki pouted. Kizashi became serious again.

"I'm worried about her too. I always am and always will be, she's our little girl, but that also means I trust her. She hasn't shut us out and I'm determined to keep it that way. The best we can do right now is support her with equal determination and stubbornness. She wants to be stronger so that she can protect the people she loves, it's not a bad goal to have." Mebuki's smiled sadly. "You're right. I just wish she didn't have to grow up so fast."

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Her parents where always her most loyal and determined teachers. When Saku expressed a need for a teacher to show her medical techniques Mebuki took her to the hospital every afternoon and harassed the staff until someone was willing to at least let her daughter see the workings of a hospital. When everyone was busy, Mebuki did her best to help Saku study and even observed operations with her when she wasn't allowed to go alone. She was surprised when she realized her daughter knew so much about the human body, but it only made her more determined to help fill in the gaps. Since it was war time and the hospital was usually flooded with patients, it was a struggle to try to get anyone to explain anything. Fortunately, Saku seemed to understand the procedures, and was picking everything up fairly quickly. The one good thing that came out of being in a hospital during war time was that they were pretty desperate when it came to helping hands. The second Saku showed an ability to heal small flesh wounds, the nurses and staff quickly took a liking to her. Mebuki realized she couldn't be much help with the medical stuff, but she quickly made up for it by making sure Saku was always well fed, had everything she would ever need, and more importantly she made sure she was present. Even if Mebuki couldn't help her learn certain things she would always be there for Saku.

Kizashi was not one to be outdone and showed equal determination in helping Saku with her strength training, speed, and taijutsu. At first, he was her only sparring partner and needless to say, once she started to use chakra with her punches and kicks Kizashi was quick to get her new sparring partners. Don't get him wrong, it wasn't because he was scared of the damage. In fact he was more proud and impressed than anything, but his daughter was showing a level of skill far above what he can help her with. He had just recognized that she needed more variety in her training, more experience with different people's type of movement.

Once he taught her everything he knew he started bringing her some retired, although crippled, shinobi sparring partners. Although the retirees didn't have their full range of motion it was a good learning experience for Saku, as she learned that some times a disability can be used as an advantage. On the few times an able bodied friend would be available, Kizashi would often bet them that his 3 year old daughter would get them on the ground within a minute. Those sessions would often start with Saku easily dominating because they aren't expecting it, but then as they got more serious, Saku would get in some good practice. Kizashi would sit near by and watch with tea. He was always ready to intervene when needed but if he got a nice laugh and some money out of it Saku didn't seem to mind. Kizashi learned a lot from Saku herself, she didn't exactly follow a specific style or flow yet and a lot of her moves were creatively made based on the situations she found herself in. He would often asked her question and test her on forms as well. He bought new scrolls whenever he could and tried to get her as much taijutsu material as possible. Later the two would go through the piles of literature together and made new taijutsu workout plans. That turned into a fun father daughter bonding activity, a habit that continued well into the future.

Since both parents where with her every step of the way, neither noticed just how fast Saku seemed to retain everything. Sometimes, even they forgot their baby was still only three.

That winter, as the year came to an end; Saku looked up at the stars and thanked whoever was out there, because despite everything that had happened: the death, the blood, the nightmares. Despite the painful empty feeling she still sometimes felt, she couldn't help but be happy that her parents are there for her.

_"Then how does one decide what and who to trust in?" Another exasperated face._

_"Experience I guess."_

_'I trust my parents and they trust in me.'_

Saku still didn't understand her nightmares. She didn't know why she had them or what they meant but by now she knew they were a part of her. If her parents could trust in her so wholly even when they didn't understand her very well, then she could accept her nightmares. Next time she won't ignore them. Next time she'll take their warning seriously.


	2. Chapter 2: Fate Is A Funny Thing

Chapter 2: Fate Is A Funny Thing

As if the gods themselves were testing her new resolve, she received a different nightmare the day she turned four years old. The boulder dream showed up again, but it was different this time. The eyes she usually associated with despair and death, the first eyes she ever saw, those were the eyes that came with the bolder dream. The three joined rings swirled and shifted in finality. She felt an overemphasized feeling of emptiness, like the kind that she has come to associate with death. She knew she wouldn't dream of those particular eyes again. Not for a while.

Then the dream shifted. She dreamt of the war and two new pairs of red eyes. Unlike the ones she has seen in her dreams thus far, these made her feel a swirl of foreign emotions she couldn't understand. The words 'guilt' and 'pity' came to mind but Saku didn't understand why.

Suddenly she saw a child her age standing among piles of corpses her mind supplying the image and smell of decay that she had seen in the hospital. The boy was a huge contrast to the skin, blood, and bones at his feet. He was small unlike the size of the bones. His face and limbs still had a cover of baby fat unlike the translucent fibers of the dead. His black eyes were framed by long lashes and clear tears unlike the eerie red encasing what might have once been recognized as a face. Suddenly they disappeared and her and the boy looked at each other in the eye as they stood on a cliff with the summer sun high above their heads. 'I can't understand what your trying to tell me' Saku tried to say but the boy just smiled sadly and jumped off the cliff.

Before she could scream or run after him or even understand what had just happened, the dream changed again. Another child, this one seemed older, was crying blood. But this time the surroundings were nothing more than a black background. The shaggy haired boy covered his face but she could see the blood running between his fingers. She tried to reach out to him. 'I want to help'. But before she could do any more than look the dream shifted again.

This time she saw a huge fox. It was contained within a beautiful red shrine covered in ink seals and glowing chains. The fox's eyes burned with hatred as he stared at Saku. His white fangs coming into view at the same time as his slitted eyes. As he roared, Saku brought her hands up to cover herself from the sudden wind. Saku expected loud noises but the wind didn't howl it was silent. As she looked back up the fox was gone but she heard the whisper of a voice say 'Please help me.' The whisper was soon forgotten though as Saku faced the worst of her dream.

The fox's glare, even the eyes of her first and still worst nightmare, was nothing compared to look she saw next. They were the same ones that, up until this point, accompanied the bolder dream in an ominous but mostly harmless sense. The same eyes but different this time. These eyes instilled a deep fear in her, like the first dream she remembers. They promised suffering and retribution. The eyes didn't burn with anger or hatred. No, it radiated something much worse, something that chilled her to the core. Before she knew it She felt herself dying again but it wasn't like all the times before. Her vision was clear, and this time she saw the faces of her parents as they were slaughtered before her eyes. A man with the same pinwheel eyes cutting slowly and painfully into their flesh. Every cut exaggerated, every scream and whimper amplified. She tried to move but couldn't, and the man with the pinwheel eyes just looked at her as he continued. You could have prevented this, but you were...no you still are... too weak. Saku tried to close her eye but they wouldn't budge. You can't save me and now you can't even fight back. Her lungs refused to breath. Saku tried to say something, anything, but she suddenly coughed blood. The man just laughed. When she finally forced a breath, she choked in her own blood. You won't be able to save them any of them either. She slowly saw flashes of the previous parts of her dream as her body bleed and bleed. There is no happy ending here. Your not strong enough to change fate all by yourself. Life was slowly leaving her as her heart came to a stop, only to wake up to a white ceiling.

As soon as she realized that she was still alive and in her room, Saku rushed to record her dream in an empty notebook. Her memory was already blurry, but she fought to remember and write down every pair of eyes she encountered. She recalled the last pair best so she does her best to record every detail of the pinwheels. Then she draws the first set of red eyes that she saw, the ones that she was sure she won't see again. She couldn't help but think that if the eyes did belong to someone, they were probably dead. A part of her was glad that they couldn't hurt her, but she felt a paranoia creep up as she thought What if they were going to come back? Both the eyes where connected but she has known that for a while now. What she doesn't understand is why or how. She tried to remember the two new pairs of eyes she saw, but for some reason she couldn't make out any details. The red and black colors were just blurry blobs in her memory compared to the sharp image of the connected rings and pinwheel.

She moves on to the children. She recognized the location of one of them. The cliff was by the mountain, she remembers seeing a similar view in her personal village geography book, and from the feel of the heat it seemed like a typical summer afternoon.

Her village geography book was actually one that her parents made for her, to help her with her vocabulary. It had lots of pictures of places all over the village. Thinking it will give her a location to put into the notebook, she quickly went to search for it. Shortly after she found an image similar to what she remembers from the dream and records the location as 'Mountain edge somewhere around the Hokage Mountain'. Saku then starts thinking about the boy among the corpses, this time as a person instead of just a dream. 'Why did he jump?' Saku comes to a miserable conclusion. 'I hope that wasn't his family.' With that in mind she marked her calendar to the first day of summer of this year. On the first day of summer she will have to make time to visit areas near the mountain.

'...Maybe this time I'll be able to do something.'

Unfortunately, the other child was more of a dead end. Nothing in the dream was recognizable. At that point, the dream was too blurry to remember any specifics. 'Was he covering his face?' Saku sulked a bit. Looking at her paper again she started writing notes about her previous dreams and their relation to this one, empty circles for the new eyes that she couldn't remember, and what little dialog she could recall.

Something is missing...The fox! It reminded her of a story her mom read to her. Mama had said that it was based on the history of the hidden leaf village. She would have to check out the library in the morning. In the mean time she wrote some notes on it and tried her best to draw a picture of the shrine and fox that suddenly came to mind. She couldn't remember anything else after that, but at least she remembered something. After putting a date to her entry, she went to store the notebook at the end of her expanding bookshelf.

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As soon as she could, Saku went to the library. She didn't really find much of anything on the fox besides the book her mom read to her, and a few other similar fairy tales. The most she could get from all the fiction was that the fox was some kind of big powerful being that had to be sealed away because it would break everything. That part was most likely fact, but there was nothing to confirm or deny this. So with nothing to show for her day of research at the library, she resorted to asking her parents who didn't know too much about it either.

When they tried to find more information together, there wasn't really anything besides one little export in a really thick history book about the first Hokage sealing the fox and a few other beings. It didn't even say where.

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Saku was getting a bit frustrated after a week of looking and finding nothing. What's worse, her dreams seemed to be hyper focused on the fox, even when she's past the point of exhaustion. Everyday the shrine looks less and less stable as the cracks grow larger. She thinks she needs to find the shrine so she can help maintain it somehow, or maybe warn someone, but she has no clue how she's supposed to do any of that. Mebuki noticed her distress and offered that they all go out for dinner. Well, it wasn't really an offer. It was more like one of the forced breaks that her parents would make her do. Saku really didn't have a choice in the matter, but she did get to choose where they went.

"Lets go out for anmitsu then"

Mebuki gave her a deadpan look. Kizashi just snickered under his breath.

"That's not an appropriate dinner. Why don't you pick something else." Mebuki told her with a tense smile and a terrifyingly sweet voice that went right over Saku's head.

"But you said..."

"No."

So they went out for ramen instead.

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Turned out ramen was the right choice because that was where she met Kushina Uzumaki. Her red hair made the image of the shrine holding the fox came to mind immediately. It also made her heart hurt. Saku didn't understand why she felt so much pain in her chest.

Before Saku could really understand what she was doing, their eyes met and suddenly she couldn't help but smile brightly and run towards her. Almost as if Kushina was someone she has known for years.

Kushina faltered in her steps. It wasn't every day that a random child smiles at a stranger and comes running towards them.

"Maybe she's excited for the ramen and wants a better look?"

She thinks. After all she was right in front of one of the best ramen stands in the village. What she wasn't expecting was for the child to run right into her.

Once Saku bumped into the older woman, she came back to her senses. Kushina could only stare as the child's expression dropped from ecstatic to nervous. Saku suddenly realized that this area was packed and she couldn't see her parents at all.

"Are you ok little girl?" She asked with concern.

And now the red haired lady was talking to her. It's a good thing her mother had drilled manners into her.

"Sorry...Um…G-Good evening."

Saku slightly bowed after she stepped back a bit.

"Um...my name is Saku Haruno"

Suddenly the two heard Saku's parents. The relief on Saku's face was plain as day.

Her parents had come running as soon as they realized she disappeared from their side.

"Saku!" her mother said threateningly all attention right on Saku. She was about to get a lecture, that was for sure.

"Ah we're sorry to interrupt you, she usually doesn't go off on her own like that" Kizashi told Kushina.

"Oh it was no problem at all, she was probably just excited to see the ramen."

Before any of the adults spoke again, but more importantly before she got a lecture from her mom, Saku chimed in.

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize what I was doing. Sorry Mama, Papa, Lady with the pretty hair" She bowed again.

Kushina smiled at the child. Mebuki sighed but Kizashi just ruffled Saku's hair and laughed.

"I'm confident that you can take care of yourself well enough, but let's not test that ok?" Kizashi teased.

Saku nodded, then turned back to Kushina something she said catching her attention.

"Are you coming to eat ramen too?"

Kushina nodded "Yep! It's a date, but I have a feeling he'll be a bit late." her face turned a little sad at the mention of her date being late. Saku didn't understand why, but she really didn't like seeing the lady's sad face. Before she knew what she was doing the offer came out of her mouth.

"You should join us while you wait. That way you won't be lonely."

Her parents looked shocked. Saku was never this friendly with a stranger.

"Oh I don't want to intrude on your family dinner!"

Saku saw the loneliness lingering in Kushina's eyes.

"It's ok. The more the merrier. Right Mama, Papa?"

They turned to Saku's shocked parents. Mebuki quickly coming to her senses.

"It's no problem at all! You are welcome to join us."

Kushina still seemed hesitant.

"I don't..."

"Please?" Saku asked.

There was really no denying her puppy eyes.

"...Alright"

Saku smiled so widely that her teeth showed, and together the four walked inside Ichiraku's Ramen Stand.

As they waited for their orders to come in Saku talked up a storm with Kushina.

"What? You're already doing weight training?"

"Yep! I wear my weights all the time so I can get stronger and faster. I'm only at 5kg right now but Papa says we can up the weight in a week or two. I think I can convince him to up the weight after 5 days. I wanted to start off with 20 but Papa wouldn't let me."

"Well, 20kg is quite a bit for someone your size."

"That's what Papa said too."

Again her parents were pleasantly surprised . After what happened with Shinobi-san, they didn't think she would start to open up so soon.

Minato chuckled coming out of what seemed like nowhere. He was a bit scuffed up "Seems I have some competition for your attention Kushina."

Without thinking, Saku cheeky replied "If you're my competition I think I'll be fine abandoner-san."

All the adults suddenly laughed, Saku blushed in embarrassment. Yet she couldn't find it in herself to really regret what she said. After all this was the 'date' that made Kushina-san sad. For some reason that she couldn't really figure out, Kushina-san felt more like a close relative than a newly met stranger. There was just something about her that made Saku feel safe and comfortable.

After that Minato joined in on the fun, Kushina filling him in on how they all met.

"Saku here seemed to be really excited about the ramen and bumped into me."

Saku suddenly looked up with a confused face. 'Why did I do that anyway?'

Unfortunately, the conversation and related train of thought was cut short in favor of eating. As she slurped her noodles, Saku remembered the fox and shrine from before. Thinking it couldn't hurt to ask, since Kushina's hair reminded her of the shrine, Saku asked about the fox.

"Ah, Kushina-san do you happen to know anything about a big fox? Based on the books in the library it should be similar to the one the first Hokage sealed away." Both Kushina and Minato froze.

Her parents chimed in, not seeming to notice the couple's unease.

"I'm pretty sure you know everything there is to know about that fox considering how may books you've looked through." Mebuki chimed in. Kizashi humming in agreement as he slurped more of his noodles.

"Why do you want to know about this fox?" Minato asked with a slightly threatening undertone.

Saku looked up from her bowl, she did notice that her two new friends suddenly seemed a bit hostile but chalked it up to her imagination. She scrunched up her eyebrows, that was a good question though. At first she was just trying to get more information on the fox to begin with so she could get a sense of what her dream means, but now that she thought about it. She already knew, in a sense, what she had to do.

"I want to help maintain the shrine."

This seemed to confuse Minato and Kushina.

"What do you mean?" Asked Kushina her voice seemed more confused than anything. Saku thought about it. 'Should I tell them about my dream?"

Saku looked at Kushina's red hair and then her face. She thought about the image of the fox and shrine she saw before. 'Maybe she's the one I'm supposed to help? I obviously won't be able to find more information than I already have.'

'She's a stranger but she doesn't feel like one at all...It should be alright. If worst comes to worse it was only a dream.'

"I had a dream that this really big fox was trapped in this really pretty red shrine with chains and seals on it. In my dreams the shrine is slowly falling apart. The fox looks really angry, his eyes always seemed to be full of hatred. So I want to help maintain the shrine as an extra set of hands. But I don't really know where the shrine is, so I've been looking up information on it in the library. The most I found was fairy tales. In a history book there was something about the first Hokage sealing a fox. I can't really find anything on the shrine though. I don't know what will happen if the fox escapes the shrine, but I get the feeling that it's nothing good."

Kushina was beyond surprised. Minato too. Saku's parents were blind sighted, they hadn't really asked her were the idea even came from, let alone why she wanted to know. They just kind of thought it was some kind of fixation or fascination that all kids have at some point. Saku took the silence as a sign that she probably shouldn't have asked the question in the first place. It was a good thing her dad came to her rescue.

Kizashi started laughing. A full belly laugh that soon had the other adults laughing along.

"Sometimes I forget that your still a kid. Maybe you should take a little break from reading all those fairy tales." He said as he as he ruffled her hair. Saku pouted.

"Hey I'm four now Papa! I'm all grown up now. "

Saku said in embarrassment.

Mebuki smile "I'm sure you will be, some day, but don't try to grow up so fast ok?"

Kushina was quick to laugh off the situation as just a kid and a silly dream. "Yeah, you sure have an active imagination."

Minato on the other hand looked at Saku. He was slightly suspicious. It was nothing but a gut feeling but as a ninja he learned to heed those warnings.

"Do you have dreams the fox often Saku?" Minato asked.

Saku furrowed her brow in thought "I've been dreaming about the fox a lot lately, not exactly the same way each time but I do get a lot of nightmares. I just don't want them to come true like with Shinobi-san?"

"Come true? Shinobi-san"

Saku nodded.

"I had dreams about boulders and bad people a lot before what happened to shinobi-san. I don't want these nightmares to come true too."

Her parents looked at her sadly. Mebuki muttered under her breath "Just when they were starting to get better too." but the two ninja picked up on it. They didn't press the issue further. From the look in Saku's eyes they could guess what she had gone through. As her fists slightly clenched, Saku muttered "It won't happen again."

"I'll be strong enough to make sure my precious people don't die. They won't suffer like that." Saku thought as she looked towards her parents.

When the silence seemed to have dragged on a bit too long, Saku went back to eating. They pretended that they didn't see the tear that gathered on the corner of her eyes. Saku was quick to wipe it away and even quicker to change the subject to something much happier.

"This ramen sure is good!" she said with a ting of lingering sadness in her voice.

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As they were about to finish their meals and go their separate ways, Saku turned to Kushina.

"Um…I sorry if I caused you trouble or ruined your date in anyway...but…If...if you ever have the time, would you mind maybe giving me some pointers or something?"

"Pointers? On what?"

Saku shrugged "Anything you want to give me pointers on. You seem really strong."

Before Kushina could answer Saku turned to her parents.

"Mama and papa would be ok with it right?"

"I think you've bothered Kushina-san enough." Said her mother.

"If she agrees to giving you pointers, we won't stop you." Kizashi translated. At Mebuki's nod of agreement, Saku turned back to Kushina.

But Kushina was a bit more focused on the latter end of Saku's answer: You seem really strong.

"If you don't mind me asking…why me?" Kushina asked as she pointed to herself.

"I mean this guy right here is actually pretty strong too and wouldn't you know, he has teaching experience, why don't you ask him?"

"Wait why are you dragging me into this?!" Minato was ignored.

Saku shook her head "But you feel so much stronger!"

'Feel?' Minato and Kushina exchanged a look.

Saku obviously noticed the confused looks again so she went on. "I don't usually like strangers nor do I feel comfortable around them, at least not this much. But I feel like I can trust you, because I feel as if I kind of know you. This feeling also tells me that you're really, really, strong, the kind of person that can protect her loved ones. So, I had to ask even if it seemed weird, because I might never see you again, and I need to be strong enough to protect my precious people too." Saku bowed again and stayed that way.

Kushina and Minato shared another look. The girl was interesting to say the least. If not for her dream and uncanny question about the nine tailed fox, then for the potential she had shown during dinner. Now it almost seemed like she was showing signs of being able to sense the fox or most likely, a mix of the fox and Kushina's chakra. This warranted a discussion.

"Give me one second. Ok?" As Saku rose from her bow, she nodded. Kushina then pulled Minato off to the side with her. Once they were out of ear shot she turned to Minato.

"Do you think she's sensing the fox?"

Minato had a nearby clone sent out a pulse of benign chakra her way. Just as a sensor would, she immediately faced towards it's direct. The clone then sent off some malicious chakra from a different direction, just as before she reacted in the same way. This time slightly tenser in her movements. Lastly, he sent a mix of both from a third direction to which she relaxed and turned towards him and Kushina with a confused face.

"Saku-chan are you alright?" "Are you looking for something?" Saku turned towards her parents shaking her head "I just felt something weird."

Minato nodded at Kushina "It seems she's not really aware of what it is but recognizes different chakra and intent. To have that kind of sensing abilities, not to mention vocabulary, and training regimen at this age is really rare."

Kushina nodded vigorously "Right! I thought the village prodigy was your twerp. Looks like he might have some competition." Kushina said as she wiggled her eyebrows. Minato couldn't help but chuckle. In a more serious tone she continued.

"Her hair is pink, maybe she has some heritage from Uzushiogakure and notices a similarity between our chakras? That would explain why she feels like she can trust me."

After losing her whole village Kushina can at least hope there are some of her people out there. She knew plenty of stories of children within the Uzumaki with prophetic dreams said to prevent disaster.

"Let's not jump to conclusions just yet. Her parents seem normal enough, with her father being a genin. Maybe you should accept the offer to give her some pointers here and there for now. That way we can keep an eye on her. What she mentioned about her dreams coming true is unsettling, more so since they're about the nine tails. There's also a possibility of her being a child spy or her being compromised in some way and trying to get information about the nine tails from you."

Kushina's rolled her eyes before smirking mischievously as she headed back towards the small family "As if I'm going to let that much potential just slip way, or worse get destroyed in the chaos."

As Kushina crouched down to Saku's level she smiled.

"Alright Saku, how about this, I'll make you my apprentice. But training is going to really hard, harder than you've been doing now. Will you be ok with that?"

Saku nodded vigorously

"Yeah! Shannarō!"

"That's the spirit Dattebane!"

Minato looked at them a little dumb-fooled.

'I thought the plan was to give her pointers every now and then not make her your protege'

Kushina smirked teasingly at him. Kushina thought that Minato was taking Saku a little too seriously. Sure Saku was a bright kid, but nothing dangerous that needed to be watched. Kushina knew in her heart and her gut that Saku was an ally. But Saku was also very young. A child that needed guidance, especially if Kushina was right about her being part Uzumaki. Kushina certainly wished someone would have done the same for her earlier in life. Maybe then she wouldn't have been captured all those years ago. She often thought of what would have happened to her, had Minato not found her.

The four adults all quickly discussed what would happen next with Saku being Kushina's new apprentic. They eventually agreed that Saku will show up at the Ramen stand next Saturday. From there Saku will go to one of training area with Kushina and return by dinner time. Saku left the stand with her parents, a huge smile on her face. Both Mebuki and Kizashi were still surprised with the day's developments.

Minato turned to Kushina an amused but exasperated smile on his face.

"Happy to have a subordinate?" A smirk made its way to her face. "She's a little too polite sometimes but she also has a fire in her, it reminds me of myself when I was that age. A real red hot blooded habanero."

"I'll be watching"

"I know. She's not a threat Minato"

He shook his head

"No, but there's something off about her. Don't let your guard down just because she's a child."

"I won't."

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That night Minato couldn't sleep. Although only a child, she was unknowingly able to sense the fox was sealed within Kushina. If Minato hadn't met Kakashi, tested Saku's abilities himself, and seen her himself, he'd immediately suspect foul play. He had seen a lot of brilliant children throughout this bloody war but he had yet to meet one like this. It was incredible to think that a child that young would be able to perceive so much and be so far into her ninja training already. Part of him desperately wanted test her more but first he needed to know more about her. Not only was her vocabulary far above her peers, but her chakra reserves were well developed for her age. She even mentioned knowing some taijutsu forms and already well on her way to learning medical ninjutsu. And that was only what he got out of the excited child and her parents in the first hour. Still something was off about Saku. Maybe it was her question about the nine tailed fox and how the cause of her interest in it came in a dream. Or maybe it was the fact that her parents don't seem very special themselves. It's not impossible to have a genius born into an otherwise normal family and Saku certainly looked like her parents, but still something was off. With his mind's continual nagging, Minato decided it was no use sleeping tonight.

So he started to dig up as much information on Saku Haruno as he could. He have to keep a close eye on Saku. Minato trusted Kushina to take care of herself, but Kushina seemed to be a little too fond of the child. Maybe if it wasn't Kushina, and maybe if Saku hadn't come to her as she did, he wouldn't be so wary of a four-year-old.

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Saku's daily routine didn't change too much in the coming days before she officially met Kushina as student and teacher. She continued to learn as much about medical ninjutsu and taijutsu as possible. She can easily water walk now and travels the village through the most secluded and hard to reach places in order to test herself. Luckily no one had noticed her, the war still being at the forefront of everyone's mind and time. Lately her mother hadn't been able to take her to the hospital as much, so she started going alone. The nurses where already used to her presence and liked her enough to not stop her from helping every once and a while. They recommended and sometimes gifted her lots of book too. Some agreed to give their books to her if they can get a summary of it. The nurses learned early on that Saku actually understood the contents of medical encyclopedias. She still spared with her father, but he was busy himself, so she sometimes revised her workout schedule to incorporate more weights without him. Saku and Kizashi had planned to continue revising it every week together to keep it challenging for her body but Saku wasn't the most patient child. At least Kizashi was always able to make sure she didn't over do it. She also started chasing animals with weights on, to increase her reflexes, speed and strength. She even went back to the neighborhood kids to work on her evasive abilities. At that point it actually became a fun game. The rocks couldn't touch her much less the lame punches. Still it wasn't enough, she needed to be stronger but had very little direction on how to get better.

Saku understood that her parents were having trouble helping her any further and balancing their other duties. She had noticed how hard they tried for her and now that she had a mentor, she didn't want her parents overworking themselves for her sake.

Saku sat them down the night before the fated Saturday.

"Papa, Mama I have some thing very important to tell you." Saku said as she led them to the couch and motioned them to sit. Once they did Saku smiled.

"I love you both so much." She started. Mebuki and Kizashi smiled, endeared.

"I'm so happy to be your daughter. I'm so lucky and so grateful to everything you have done for me. So I want to tell you, Thank you."

Mebuki and Kizashi got up at that point and hugged their adorable kid.

"We love you very much too."

"And we're equally lucky to have such a great daughter."

Saku hugged them closer. There was silence as the family enjoyed the loving hug.

"Mama, Papa, I'll be ok. "

the two parents looked down at Saku but she only smiled at them.

"I know this past year hasn't been easy for any of us. But I'll be ok now. You two don't need to try so hard for me anymore just your support is more than enough. You don't have to make time to take me to the hospital or train with me when I know your tired. You keep telling me that I should take more breaks. So I will, as long as you both do too. You don't have to worry about me. Ok?" Mebuki had tears in her eyes and Kizashi looked sad but proud at the same time.

"We're your parents. We'll always worry about you." Mebuki said.

"I'll agree to taking more breaks as long as you stick to your end of the bargain." Kizashi joked. Together they crushed her into a long hug.

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The day Saku and Kushina finally met again was fairly uneventful. Kushina spent most of the day testing Saku to see just how good she really was. Honestly, Kushina was surprised. Her chakra reserves were developing nicely for someone her age. They weren't like an Uzumaki child's reserves but they where impressive enough. She had excellent chakra control and was even able to already walk on all kinds of surfaces even some weird slippery goo Kushina got on short notice (long story), and she didn't even need to do a hand sign to concentrate her chakra. She also knew enough medical ninjutsu to know how to repair surface wounds and was well versed in advance medical theory. She was good at taijutsu and was developing her stamina, strength, and speed. Her kata forms were near impeccable. Still, her level of skill wasn't far off of what some of the clan children where capable of.

Saku was especially happy to show Kushina her ability to finally be able to use superhuman strength at will, as she demonstrated with a tree. When Kushina saw the sturdy tree fall at the hands of the four-year-old with no hand signs in sight Kushina couldn't help but ask:

"Ne Saku-chan, have you ever met Tsunade Senju before?" Saku just gave her a confused expression and a shake of her head. "No, who is she?"

While Saku worked on some target practice Kushina told her stories of the Tsunade Senju and her team. They had been a big talk throughout the war for their outstanding efforts. Hearing the stories made Saku feel weird. A weird sense of familiarity was the only feeling she could identify. "Maybe I did hear about her somewhere? Maybe in one of the books in the Library?"

Not knowing what she was feeling or what to say, Saku decided to apologize. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to copy Senju-san. It happened as a fluke once and I just wanted to figure out how to actually do it." her face looked depressed and the fragile smile wasn't making it better. Kushina frowned.

"So, what if you have similar abilities? If you were able to imitate a legendary ninja without even knowing about them and doing it at the age of four, no less, I think you're doing pretty well for yourself!" Saku smiled at that.

"How did you do it as a fluke anyway? That technique requires some serious chakra control."

Saku smiled sadly and stopped "I'll tell you about it after the tests...It…It involves Shinobi-san and if I start thinking about that I'll start feeling weird." It was like a cloud had suddenly decided to rain all over her, if her expression was anything to go by. Kushina nodded.

It was obvious that Saku's strengths seem to lie in her chakra control and self-discipline. What was truly impressive was that most of what Saku knew was self-taught. She was a true autodidact.

Kushina was quickly brought back from her thoughts as Saku finished with her target practice. "All done sensei! What's next?"

"You did well for using borrowed weapons."

"Papa brings over some retired shinobi from time to time. Most of them are crippled, but they're still really good ninja. They've shown me a trick or two."

'Should have seen that one coming.' Kushina chuckled.

"Ne Saku-chan, do you know any other ninjutsu beside the basic medical ninjutsu you showed me?"

"No sensei."

"What about genjutsu?" Saku shook her head.

"The books say it's dangerous to practice without a teacher so I only know how it works, in theory."

"Fuinjutsu?"

"Ah actually I would like to know more about fuinjutsu. I've read a book or two at the library about it. From what I've read the art of sealing is a very valuable tool. Ninja can make all kinds of things with the seal arrays like for storage, transportation, and protection. It seems like it could really come in handy one day! I've only read a few pieces of theory from the library but nothing good enough to try to attempt to make my own seals. I was hoping to look into a way to make them or use them so that they don't require the use of a lot of chakra. Especially since I don't exactly have the largest reserves, and all the best ones seems to need 3 people's worth. I'm not sure how much it takes to make the basic ones but it would be pretty silly to have a storage scroll and not be able to open it when you really need it you know?"

Kushina laughed.

"Well Saku you're in luck. I happen to be an Uzumaki, sealing is something I'm actually pretty good at. Guess we finally found somethings you need a little help with. You sure are a little genius aren't you?"

Saku's eyes drew dark and a little far off at that moment as she stared to the direction of the Hokage mountain. "I don't think I'm anything special. I just want to be able to stop my nightmares from happening."

'Nightmares again huh?' Kushina moved closer to the girl "Saku-chan?" Saku shook her head and snapped out of it. "I'm fine sensei!" She said her smile a little strained. Kushina's heart squeezed a little. Kushina knew that look. The pain of fallen comrades. Saku was doing exceptionally well dealing with that, for her age. Or maybe it was because of her age.

Turning back to the task at hand Kushina went on to explain how her training will proceed based on what she saw today.

"Before we decide on how this is going to work, Saku do you know what kind of ninja you want to be?"

Saku nodded

"I want to be strong enough to live for my precious people."

"Live for your precious people?"

"It's not enough to protect them with my life." Saku explained

"My parents will never forgive me or themselves if I died for their sake."

'Just like I'll never forgive myself for shinobi-san's death.'

"So I won't lose, and I won't die. I want to be the kind of shinobi that no matter how bad of a situation I'm in, I'll be strong enough to protect others and still survive."

"If that's the case you have to be really really strong you know? That going to take time and a lot of training."

"I'll do whatever it takes!"

"Good! By knowing medical ninjutsu you can not only keep yourself alive, but make sure your precious people don't die, either. Taijutsu is always useful in the field especially when your out of chakra. Since your going to be healing, you can expect to be out of chakra more often than not. You seem to be doing well enough on your own in terms of taijutsu and medical ninjutsu though. I can give you some pointers and experience with taijutsu through sparing. Unfortunately, I won't be able to help you with medical ninjutsu at all. So I want you to keep doing what you have been doing for that." Saku nodded

"If you can master both medical ninjutsu and taijutsu you'll be a force to be reckoned with. In terms of genjutsu, that's not really my specialty so I can't teach you much on that besides what it feels like and how to break it. I should have a book for you on that but it's really basic so I'll see if I can get anything better next time."

Saku nodded, mentally taking notes of what Kushina was saying.

"Ninjutsu is a bit more of a necessity. We'll start with some basic stuff like clones and transformations first. Then work our way up."

"Clones and transformations?" Saku didn't know that was something she could do with chakra yet. She hadn't been able to really get herself to go to the restricted chakra application section of the library. In reality, she couldn't really bare going in there for too long before thinking about shinobi-san and his promise to let her have access to all of it.

Kushina nodded excitedly.

"But more importantly I'll be teaching you everything there is to know about fuinjutsu. If you can incorporate that into what you already have going for you, you'll be unstoppable, trust me."

Saku nodded.

"Let's start with some sparing to get your blood flowing, then we'll talk about hand seals."

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"Ok Saku-chan, come with me." As the two brightly haired females walked along the streets of the Hidden Leaf, Saku stared at the afternoon sky. 'I should probably get home in time for lunch.' As if Kushina read her mind she says, "You are going to stay for lunch, right?" right as they stop in front of a house. "Oh! I didn't mean to intrude!" Kushina dragged her inside. "Nonsense! I told your parents last time that I'd treat you to lunch. Wait at the table, I need to go get something really quick and then we can have lunch ok?" and Kushina rushed off again.

Left alone, Saku couldn't help but giggle "Kushina-sensei is the best." She muttered.

"That she is"

Saying that Minato scared the shit out of Saku would be an understatement. She almost fell off her chair. She hadn't seen the blond since she first met Kushina, but now that she focused on him Saku noticed something. He seemed different. His whole presence kind of blended in with the surroundings but not only that, it was just different.

Suddenly remembering her manners. Saku stood up and bowed "Ah Good afternoon! I am sorry for the intrusion. Kushina-sensei was very adamant that I wait for her here. I'm Saku Haruno."

Minato chucked a little "Minato Namikaze. I believe we met at that ramen place when you met Kushina." Saku nodded but seemed hesitant and cautious around him. The clone took note of that.

"How's the training going?"

"Sensei has just been testing me so far. She said I do things that Tsunade Senju does. I didn't know who she was, but Kushina-Sensei made her sound really cool, so I think I did ok! Then we spared a bit and then she taught me the hand signs for a transformation jutsu"

"Like Tsunade huh? What did you do to make her say that?"

"Didn't you see?"

"So you did notice I was around."

"Kushina-sensei noticed before I did. You were hiding in the trees to the north."

"Why were you so surprised to see me then."

Saku hesitated.

"You feel different from when we met at the ramen stand."

"I didn't feel different at the training ground?"

"No, you probably felt the same but I didn't notice since you were farther. You feel like yourself but not exactly and you blend into the background more now." Saku tried to explain.

"Well your not wrong. I'm a clone and masking my chakra, but I honestly didn't expect you to pick up on that difference."

Minato grabbed a glass and some water and sat down at the table. "Kushina is probably going to be a while. I will admit, punching down a tree paired and with your interest in medical ninjutsu I can see why she made the comparison. How did you learn how to do that?"

Saku shrugged. "I did it by accident once. I just kept reading books, and training until I figured out how to do it again."

Minato looked at her sharply "That's not something that can be done by accident."

"That's what Kushina-sensei said too."

"You didn't tell her. Why?"

"It just hurts to remember. I didn't want to fail her tests."

"Would it help to tell us about Shinobi-san?" Kushina asked as she comes in with a few pieces of paper. She sat down at the table with the two. Saku's eyes grew sad.

"Sometimes talking about the good times helps with the pain. You don't have to tell us about what happened."

Saku hadn't talked to anyone about what happened with Shinobi-san since the time the anbu had interrogated her in the hospital. Maybe they were right. Maybe talking about it will help.

'I don't have to tell them everything, I can start with the beginning.' Before she realized it, she started to tell them everything. With every word she felt lighter. Saku couldn't understand why she felt so safe telling Minato and Kushina. She told them about crushing the bolder and how she couldn't remember doing it at first. And as she talked about it, Kushina held her hand. Unlike her parents their eyes screamed they understood all too well what she was feeling.

"I guess the month I spent working on calling my chakra helped with something. It was just a bit too little too late to be of any use to shinobi-san. I don't think I'll ever forgive myself for shinobi-san's death. I don't think I want to. It still feels like its my fault. If I hadn't been there he would have survived. If I hadn't dragged him there he would still be alive too."

Saku finished.

"Sometimes people have to live with the burden of the dead. You're the one to decide if it breaks you or makes you stronger. It seems you've already decided" said Kushina said as she gave Saku a sad smile. Saku smiled back.

"You were right Kushina-san, talking helped."

"Nothing like a life or death situation to get you to use some of your full potential." said Minato. For some reason Saku found the need to laugh at that and soon they were all smiling. They were in a much better mood than before.

"Oh Sensei! What did you go to get?"

"Oh that! Sorry it took so long to find it, I knew I had some lying around." Kushina smiled triumphantly and handed Saku a blank piece of paper.

"What is this?"

"It's chakra paper. If you send some chakra to it, it will show you what your natural chakra affinity is. Go ahead and try it out while I get lunch ready."

After sending some chakra to the paper, Saku was startled to see it crumble in her hands.

"Natural earth affinity..." Minato commented.

Kushina brought over the previously prepared sandwiches, onigiri, and tea and then sat next to her.

"Try it a few more times Saku-chan. Sometimes people can have more than one affinity, but it doesn't show right away. Considering how special you are, I wouldn't be surprised."

So Saku did while Kushina started to prepare their plates. The next two times came with the same result as the first but the third time the chakra paper became damp. Saku turned to Kushina.

"Water too huh. That's good I actually have an affinity for that as well."

Kushina set a plate of food down in front of Saku.

"Time to dig in Dattebane!" She said as she started to eat.

Saku grabed some onigiri.

"Um Minato-san are you not eating?"

"Clones don't need to eat. I'll only be around for a little longer anyway." Saku nodded.

"Oh Saku-chan did you realize he was a clone?"

Saku shook her head "No, but I noticed he was different once he came closer."

Kushina laughed.

"So, I guess you're more an earth type huh? Hey Minato, do you have any earth type ninjutsu scrolls on you?"

"I'm afraid not. But Kakashi might have some."

"Alright so it's decided. I'll teach you some basic water techniques that you could use in a pinch aside from the basics, and Minato is going to get you that scroll from his own subordinate. He should be able to help you too, if you need it, right?" Minato nodded in defeat and sighed.

"I'll borrow a scroll from Kakashi the next time I see him."

"What exactly will we be doing?" asked Saku.

"We'll worry about the specifics of the techniques when we get down to it. First things first will be basic ninjutsu and fuinjutsu training. Sound good?"

Saku nodded and smiled "Yes. Thank you Kushina-sensei" She smiled back. "To start off with I'm going to lend you some fuinjutsu scrolls. I want you to carefully look over them ok?"

Saku nodded

"Then next week when we meet again, we can start with the transformation jutsu again and some basic sealing forms. Minato should have an earth scroll ready for you by then, but you are not to actually practice elemental jutsu without either me or Minato around. It can get very dangerous sometimes. Do I make my self clear?"

Saku made a confused face, she seemed ready to argue about not being able to practice on her own.

"Why am I being dragged into this again?" Minato mumbled under his breath.

"Is there a problem?" when Kushina starts looking like a demon that's when you back out. Minato and Saku were quick to say, "Nope no problem at all!"

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Life continued similarly for Saku. She kept her training regimen about the same with a few updates added every once in a while, and a whole lot more reading incorporated. Saku now also had some new training in ninjutsu and fuinjutsu added to her regimen. Minato quickly realized Saku's good work ethic and high intelligence seemed to be the reason behind her exponential growth. This also meant she was an easy student to teach, only needing a nod in the right direction and some reading material every now and then. This was very convenient considering the state of war they were currently at. Saku's innate abilities weren't too far off from a regular academy student's capacity but she made up for it with creative intelligence and a lot of practice from before she even met them, often working hard to make up for all her weaknesses. Considering her constant need to learn, determination, stubbornness, her experience with a life or death situation, and her cognitive and medical test history Minato found that it all made sense. This helped ease some of the suspicion he had towards Saku. In fact she was starting to grow on him. Yet, he still had a strange nagging feeling in the back of his head, that he was missing something important. Saku had never left the village and besides the one witnessed attack by the rock ninja she never had any contact with any foreign shinobi but something was just off. She was hiding something. Maybe it had something to do with her initial fascination with the nine tailed fox, but she hasn't asked about it since their meeting. She hadn't mentioned anything about her dreams lately either. He didn't think the child held malicious goals since Kushina would have noticed right away but something was off.

It wasn't until one night when Saku was too tired to get home that his suspicions became more concrete. It also happened to be one of the few nights he actually was able to come back to the village in person rather then have a clone monitoring the situation.

It was the first time either Minato or Kushina had experienced Saku having a night terror. This wasn't like her past night mares either. This time she wasn't paralyzed nor choking on her own blood instead, she was able to fight. So, when Minato and Kushina woke up to a scream, broken furniture, and a dazed and confused Saku seemingly terrified out of her mind Minato couldn't help but be suspicious. That nagging feeling coming to the forefront of his mind again.

"Saku! You're ok! It ok. It's me! I won't let anything bad happen to you again! I promise" Kushina was quick to retrain the child, partly with her chakra when she almost sent a chakra fist to her face. As Kushina's arms and chakra encased the child in what could only be described as a bear hug, Saku seemed to be coming back to her senses.

"S-Sensei?" It hurt to see the child cry in desperation. Saku was clinging so tightly to Kushina in a panicked state. When she calmed down enough to speak they had to ask what happened. Saku was having trouble speaking but she forced herself anyway. They deserved an explanation. Trust was a two way street, after all.

"I'm so sorry!"Saku said. Her voice sounding ruff from screaming as her body still trembled a bit from the adrenaline and fear.

"I just...I don't want anyone to die again. I don't want to die." Her body starting to sag. Kushina slowly brought her down to the floor.

"Ever since I could remember, even one time before Shinobi-san, before I started going to the library, I had nightmares of things. Red eyes and dying paralyzed and choking on my own blood. The people I love and care about slaughtered before my very eyes. Dreams of boulders and earth coming down and so much death...This...this was the first time I could fight back. The first time both of you where in my dreams too."

As she looked around Saku realize just how much damage she had done. It was a good thing she hadn't broken the house's foundations with a chakra charged punch.

"I'm sorry I ruined your furniture."

"Don't worry about that right now, come here you're ok." Kushina brought her back to her arms holding the child close. 'Was it because of the war? Saku was a child that was more sensitive to the chakra of those around her, but she's never shown any major discomfort before. She even helps out at the hospital.'

Kushina looked to Minato. He was thinking about the reason behind this, but when he met her eyes, all he could do was shake his head. He didn't know what could have caused this either.

"If you ever want to talk about it we are here for you ok? You don't have to go through this alone."

Saku cried some more and basked in Kushina's affectionate hug before deciding to tell them everything she could remember. The last time she shared what happened with Shinobi-san she felt like a weight had lifted off her. Maybe this will be the same.

She met Minato's eyes as she lifted her head, then met Kushina's and she told them of the dreams that have been haunting her since the night she turned two years old.

"Do you remember the day we met and I asked you about a fox and shrine from my dream?" The couple nodded, both curious to hear more about this dream specifically.

"When I saw Kushina-Sensei, for a second, I thought of the angry fox and the shrine. Sensei's hair was the same color as the shrine the fox was in. I don't know what came over me after that but then I was bumping into you. At first that dream was only a section of something bigger. The part about the fox and shrine at first was nothing major. I almost forgot about it the first time it came up. But it was the only part of the dream that I had some direction to research into, so I looked into it. By the time I met you both I was a week into researching it. At that point I would only have dreams about the fox and I kept seeing the shrine fall apart, dream after dream. I couldn't help but think it was some kind of warning. That I have to do something to make sure the fox doesn't break out of the shrine. I was...I am sure that that dream was a warning for something. Before I met shinobi-san I had a dream that made me question who I trust. I was scared that the ground was going to cave in under me, but more importantly I dreamt of death and boulders. Similar boulders to those that were hurled at shinobi-san and me when we were attacked. I thought was just in relation to trust, but it seemed to be a little more than that. I can't help but think it was some kind of warning of what would happen. Ever since then I couldn't help but take the nightmares more seriously. That fox one included. The dreams aren't very straight forward with what exactly I'm supposed to be doing so I asked you about the fox, since your hair made me think of it. I stopped having that dream after meeting you though. Most of my dreams aren't like that though. More often then not they have these red eyes and me choking in a pool of my own blood or watching people I care about get killed before my eyes. This one was one of those. Usually I can't move, but this time I could."

"I'm scared something bad is going to happen whenever I have a different nightmare like with the fox and the bolders. The fact that they're followed by my typical nightmares don't help either. I keep a journal of what I remember seeing and sometimes when I remember the eyes I draw them. My parents told me even as a baby I would have nightmares. I just don't remember if they were the same as the ones I do remember."

Minato didn't know what to do or say. She showed no hint of deception. Her eyes showed nothing but sadness and clarity. He wasn't sure where to go from here.

"Why don't you bring that journal over and we can try to figure it out together? I read that nightmares are a sign of stress. If we can figure out what's troubling you maybe we can help you fix your nightmares."

Saku nodded. Minato knew there was something more to this. His suspicion wasn't helping. Maybe it was time to involve his Sensei and see what he had to say about Saku. Minato himself had checked her over a few more times to make sure she wasn't being ensnared in some unknown jutsu from her last encounter, but it didn't hurt to get a second opinion.

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The next time Saku came over she brought her journal with her. It wasn't anything special just random drawings in weird order, some loose leaf pages folded in the journal, most entries dated. One page in particular she was quick to show them both

"These two eyes are in my dreams a lot. I don't understand it very well myself. This one is the one that used to kill me but the last time I saw it was with the first dream about the fox in the shrine." Saku pointed to the eye on the left. "The other one started showing up with my dreams about bolders. I saw it a lot a little before and a lot more after the incident with Shinobi-san." She showed them her image of the fox in the shrine. "Oh, that dream was also when I first saw children my age. One child was crying blood from his eyes and there was another surrounded by corpses." Saku went on to explain everything she could. Neither where too surprised by some of the descriptions. They were at the climax of war after all and they knew Saku had some chakra sensory abilities but from what they tested she never had much range nor conscious awareness of it.

Minato knew that the red eyes she had drawn was a form of sharingan and he also knew that he will be questioning his sanity tonight, because there are very few explanations for why Saku would be dreaming of the sharingan of one of his students.

"Is it alright if I keep this?" Saku nodded.

"You don't have to trust me nor believe me Minato-san but please keep an eye out. I'm scared something bad might happen soon. This last dream I had made that clear to me. The main thing I've noticed so far is that they seem to be warnings for something but I'm not sure what. You and Kushina-sensei where in this one getting killed along with my parents. That can't happen!"

"Don't worry, I'll look in to this and keep an eye out." and with the mask of a smile Minato leaves the room. 'I'm going to have to ask Jiraiya about this.'


	3. Chapter 3: The Meaning of Life

Chapter 3: The Meaning of Life

As summer started to approach Saku found herself having to take more breaks than usual. After the emotional mess of going over all her dreams in pain staking detail with Kushina-Sensei and Minato-san and with how hot summer was this year, no one blamed her. The heat served another purpose though, a reminder of the boy among the corpses. If she remembered correctly, this was something that happened near by the Hokage cliff face. Coincidentally, she has been recently using the surrounding area for her chakra control training. Since Minato-san and Kushina-Sensei were busy today Saku's afternoon was completely free after lunch. It seemed like the perfect time to go check out that specific area. _'__Hopefully there won't be any __corpses.__ If __there are and there's bad people __around __I have to distract them__ with a super punch and run to warn the village.'_

"Saku! Lunch is ready!"

"Coming mama!"

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There was nothing amiss at the Hokage cliff face. The view was especially pretty from so high up. She decided to visit the spot every week or so, just in case.

Saku continued on with her busy schedule of training and studying and soon the dreams were momentarily forgotten. She started to come to the spot more regularly, to have her lunch, since the view was so nice. For the most part it was peaceful and no one bothered her there. In fact she didn't see much of anyone around that area, until the one day she did.

A boy her age was at her spot.

"Oh Hi!" she waved and yelled in his direction, only for him to ignore her completely and walk away from her, as if he didn't hear her. _'__I can't tell if he's being __rude __or just didn't hear me.__'_

Saku quickly found out that he definitely heard her at least once, but chose to ignore her rather then acknowledge her in any way. Honestly it pissing her off a bit, after all it was a bit rude, but since he didn't want to talk there was no point in wasting her time. Saku would continue to go to the area every so often, and on the few times that she would run into the boy she would equally ignore him and have her lunch while looking at the view. But then something changed. During one of the rare cool summer afternoons they happened to meet eyes. Saku realized, she knew exactly who this boy was. She had to pinch herself to make sure she wasn't hallucinating or something. She wasn't.

He looked away first and then promptly left, but Saku didn't move. Because she suddenly realized she couldn't ignore him anymore. The boy among the corpse was real, she was positive. There was no way she would forget that look, even if it was a dream. The look in his eyes...he knew death too, much more than she had yet to see.

"Papa how am I supposed to talk to a boy?" Mebuki dropped a plate and Kizashi choked on his tea. Kizashi ended up recovering first and promptly enveloped his daughter in a hug.

"No Saku-chan you're too young!"

"What's his name?" Mebuki asked shortly after, slightly excited.

"Don't encourage her!"

Saku gave her dad a confused face "I don't know his name. What do you mean Papa? I'm too young to have friends?" Kizashi quickly diverted the question and instead asked what she meant by 'talk to a boy'. Once she finally escaped her father's arms she explained herself. "I keep seeing him around this one place that has a pretty view, but every time I try to talk to him he either leaves right away or ignores me. I tired to introduce myself and I know he heard me at least once but he just ignores me again. He's actually really rude! So I just started to ignore him too." Saku huffed in anger but then her face turned sad and her eyes became downcast.

"But...I can't ignore him anymore. His eyes...they looked like mine after what happened to Shinobi-san"

Saku's gaze darkened

"I was lucky. I had mama and papa that love me very much, but what if he doesn't have anyone for himself?"

Her parents gave each other a look of understanding

"I want to be his friend and help but I don't know what I should say to him. Especially since he keeps ignoring me."

Mebuki and Kizashi sat down at the couch and patted the space between them for her to sit at. When she was settled between her parents Mebuki started "After what happened with that shinobi, we didn't know how to help you at first either. I wanted to do something for you, but papa noticed that you were healing on your own, in your own way. You found your answer on how to deal with that loss on your own."

Kizashi continued "Everyone deals with their problems in their own way. What might work for one person won't always work for another because every person lives their own truth. All we could do for you then was support your decisions as long as they did not hurt you. We made sure you knew you weren't alone."

"If this boy is suffering there isn't anything you can do to erase his pain, but you can let him know that you are there to help him."

"Does that make sense Saku-chan?" Saku nodded and she smiled

"Thanks papa, mama, I don't know what I'd do without you." As Saku was enveloped in the arms of her parents she couldn't help but think that family hugs are the best.

Saku set off to find the cliff edge where she would find the boy. She hadn't been able to visit again for another month or two since things at the village was a little more hectic than usual. When she did it was a cloudy day, and the war seemed to be finally settling down. On a whim, she decided to take a different route than her usual one. Somehow, she ended up on a higher ledge then her usual view. It gave her an even better view of the village. She looked towards the usual place the one that face the tiny river and saw the boy falling down the cliff.

Her body moved on its own again, like it did when the bolder headed towards shinobi-san. It was a despite sprint and even more despite jump. Caution thrown out to the wind as she stupidly fell after him, angling her body to fall faster. She hadn't noticed that she initially used chakra making her move faster than she knew she could. The next thing she knows she's falling and all she can think about is catching the boy, but he's still slightly ahead of her. So she angles towards the mountain legs encased in chakra as she uses the mountain as a downward spring board. He seemed surprised and she barely registered the two kuni in his hands, but she managed to avoid hurting herself or him. She wrapped her hands around his stomach, his back to her chest. In her frenzied state she realized she didn't exactly think this through. As they started to fall together she angled their bodies to reduce their momentum.

"Hang on!" thinking quickly, her reflexes took control. Saku propelled their combined weight toward the cliff, poring chakra to her legs and later one of her hands to slow their decent down the cliff. Saku was fortunately able to stop their fall and easily stuck to the cliff only about a meter from the ground. She was slightly panting the adrenaline and sudden use of chakra leaving her feeling a little light headed. As she jumped down the rest of the way she finally thought to look towards the boy. He just looked at her and she realized she was still holding him. "Oh, I'm sorry." Saku released him and stepped away. He continued to look at her, but this time he focused on her scraped up hand. Saku finally realized that the hand she used to brace herself was bleeding. She lifted a leg and checked on her foot, it seemed fine, her shoe had taken the blunt of the damage. When she looked up she noticed the boy was closer and his gaze guilty. "Oh…Don't worry I'm fine it's just a few scratches! I can even heal them myself." He continued to stare as she made a few hand signs. As her hand glowed green she focused on inducing cellular division to mend together her scrapes and stop the bleeding. She could still feel his eyes on her and it was starting to get awkward "Sorry about the rough ride. I just saw you falling off that cliff and my body kind of moved on its own. I didn't know you where planning on saving yourself. I'm Saku Haruno by the way. I've seen you around a few times." She smiled towards him but her eyes were focused on her hand. "Itachi Uchiha". His voice made her look up. There was some silence after that as they stared at each other for a second, before Saku turned back to her hand to finish healing herself.

'_He's not ignoring me for once. Guess __this is my chance for__ conversation.'_ with a smile Saku sent chakra to her wrist band were the storage seal holding her lunch was. As she pulled it out she turned her eyes towards Itachi again. "So Itachi-san want to have lunch with me? I'll share mine with you, I have plenty." At this point Itachi looked more confused than anything, but he nods anyway.

Saku gestured to a corner near the river. At his nod Saku and Itachi head in the direction before settling down by the river. She proceeds to unpack a huge three-layer lunch. That seemed to warrant a raised eyebrow from Itachi. "My training kind of keeps me hungry you know, plus I like having left overs for later if I decide to stay late studying or do extra training or if I find a friend to share it with." She smiled at him

The two children sat by the river and ate in silence.

"You can heal yourself." Saku turn to him.

"Oh that, I've been learning some medical ninjutsu from the nurses at the hospital. I can only do surface wounds for the most part, though. Human bones are a lot harder to fix."

Itachi nodded.

"Oh…" Saku's hand extended towards his hand. Itachi filched back. Saku only smiled leaving her hand in the air letting it glow green. He didn't flinch back when she grabbed his hand and healed the scratches on his palms. She had only recently noticed he had some scratches of his own.

"It's not good to think that way, you know."

Itachi gave her a questioning look. Saku looked at his face then faced the river.

"I can't say I know what you're thinking or how you feel. I don't know what you've seen or experienced, but I used to have the same look in my eyes. You're not alone."

Itachi stared for a bit. There was silence for a while again. Saku went back to eating.

"What's the point of life?" Saku looked at Itachi, but he was facing the river. She swallowed her food.

"hmm well that depends."

"On what?"

"On what you want it to mean."

Itachi stared at her in confusion again to which Saku grinned.

"The meaning of your life, that's something you have to answer for yourself. Papa said that everyone has their own truth. What my answer is could be very different from yours or someone else…" Saku faced towards the river before continuing.

"For me it was a matter of if I wanted it to mean nothing and die as I morn and watch those dear to me be ripped away or fight to live and protect them. I was so sick of crying and feeling sorry for myself. I want to be able to protect those dearest to me because I can't help but think, if I don't, one day they will be ripped away from me. When I thought of all of that, it was a simple choice really. I decided that my life has meaning because I will use every bit of it to make sure everyone I love stays alive."

Saku flashed a smile as she confidently shifted into a quick hero pose with one hand at her hip and the other flexing her bicep. Her eyes, though, they told a different story. She was terrified, but her smile was genuine.

"Of course, I'm going to give it my all Shannarō!"

Itachi continued to stare a her, then turns towards the river again.

Saku sat back down frowning and sighed. She wasn't sure if her words got though him or not. Itachi wasn't the easiest person to read.

"I still have people to protect. As long as I have them, as long as I remember them, I'll keep fighting. I won't die for my precious people, I'll do better and live for them."

Saku couldn't help but smile sadly.

"I'll admit though, if my parents weren't there for me when they were with all their support, I might have not have come to that conclusion. So, if it'll help you get to your answer any faster, I'll help you in any way I can!"

Itachi seemed to be considering something, he nodded, and they continued to eat in comfortable silence.

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After that, it became a habit to stop by the river. Itachi would be there sometimes and every time she would share her lunch with him. It was mostly a silent affair unless Saku had a particularly exciting thing to share, mostly to do with a new move she's learned or is learning. Itachi would stay silent for the most part. Every once and a while, he would ask her a question or even share something on rare occasions. Three weeks into their odd friendship, he finally asked the question that he'd been wondering since the start of their interactions.

"Why did you attempt to save me?"

Curious green eyes shifted to him. He knew that she understood what he was referring to, even the question he hadn't asked.

"Why wouldn't I? I wasn't able to save a friend once and he died protecting me. I've been training to be stronger, so I can save as many of my precious people as possible, of course that includes you. That means you can't die, got it?" Saku smiled at him before she returned her gaze to the river while munching on a sandwich.

Itachi, uncharacteristically then went on to ask about the friend that died. Surprisingly, Saku answered, explaining that it helps to talk about it. He expected her to be more intrusive in kind but she didn't ask, instead waiting for him to share things he felt comfortable sharing.

They stayed friends in this way, Saku doing most if not all the talking or they just ate in silence. It was the kind of friendship where silence wasn't a bad thing, just peaceful.

The end of summer had brought an end to the war. And the end of the year brought many changes. Minato couldn't help but look at the book Saku had given him again, this time with a few more entries and details. One thought plaguing him more than anything else.

_She dreamed of Obito's death. _

Now with his new position, Minato couldn't exactly ignore Saku's case anymore.


	4. Chapter 4: Spring

Chapter 4: Spring

"I'm going to have a baby brother or sister!" Saku was ecstatically telling everyone the news since the start of the new year, even her parents that knew to begin with. Initially Mebuki and Kizashi wanted to keep it a secret, but Saku had been working on sensing chakras ever since Minato suggested it. During her training at home she noticed the tiny flicker of a chakra that seemed so similar to her own. It also explained why her mom seemed to be getting a little fatter and more temperamental lately. After that her mom spilled the beans and nothing could stop Saku's constant excited cheering. She told everyone. Kushina-sensei and Minato-san, Itachi-san, the whole hospital, random strangers on the street that smiled and congratulated her, the library staff and basically the whole village. She even started reading parenting books and sibling stories because she had to know how to be the best sister ever.

Not even a week into the new year, while Saku ranted about what she had read in this one parenting book, Minato and Kushina dropped the bomb that they were going to have a child of their own and would like some book recommendations. To which Saku first asked if she could be his god-sister and then proceeded to recommend the parenting books her parents said where the most accurate, with their experience with her. After all it was always best to fact check with people that had real experiences when it came to these things. She wasn't allowed to tell anyone about that development, though. They both sat her down and explained the dangerous implications of the information, what with Minato being the new Hokage and everything.

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The next time she saw Itachi, she excitedly told him how she was going to be, not only a big sister but also a big god-sister to her parent's friend's kid, and how much more research she had to do. She knew she couldn't tell him who's kid, but she still had to tell someone, besides Itachi didn't know and didn't ask about those things.

"What kind of research have you been doing exactly?"

_I stand corrected, guess there's a first time for everything._

"Well research on how to take care of a baby of course! I will be the best sister and god-sister in existence, so I have to know how to take care of my younger siblings. I have a list of parenting books I've been reading from the library that I've fact checked with my parent's account on myself. They don't have books on how to be a good big sister, so I'm supplementing that with novels on siblings and how they are supposed to interact."

It was quiet after that, so Saku figured he asked to be polite for once. But before they parted ways Itachi asked for the list she had made.

"Of course! It's at home right now, I can bring it to you tomorrow. Wait. Why are you interested?"

"I will be getting a younger sibling a well."

"That's amazing! Shannarō! Forget tomorrow, let's go to my place right now and get that list. Finally, someone to talk about all this stuff with."

Itachi avoided Saku for a few months after he got the information he needed. Saku was usually talkative, but when she was excited it was on a completely different level. Not to mention, her list of books was significantly extensive. She didn't notice his disappearance, though. She had more important things to worry about, like how to make sure her siblings are protected at all times.

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"Minato-san I have a question."

"Hmm?"

"What do you know about protective seals and barriers?"

Minato finished chewing his food, responding with more attention on the documents he was filling out then the actual conversation.

"Kushina should have a book or two. She should have already assigned them to you. The really powerful seals and analysis of them are kept under lock and key for emergency cases, and I can't give them to you. Why?"

"Can you teach me how to make the most powerful kind, or lead me in the right direction, or at least check my seal to make sure I don't hurt myself or someone else? I want to make a protection barrier seal for my siblings. Something that will protect them from physical attacks and malicious chakra."

"Already trying to make your own seals? It takes years to be a fuinjutsu master you know. It's not easy making seals. Why don't you ask Kushina?"

Saku frowned "Because I'm going to make a protection seal for not only my baby sister but for her and the baby too. Pay attention will you! I said 'siblings' plural. You can't tell her either! I just need to make one really good one. I'm sure I can do it if you can help me. Please?" and there were the puppy eyes that have slowly become more and more effective.

Minato couldn't help but sigh. Since his new appointment as Hokage he had been digging into Saku's history even more. He has gone back a few generations in her family but he didn't find anything significant. It didn't help that his new job also came with so much paperwork, either. He knew Saku was only a child, and she meant well, but her journal of nightmares was unsettling. That's when he remembered who was coming to town.

Smiling he told her "Ok"

Saku smiled and did a little victory dance.

"But I won't be able to help you. There are a few things I need to take care of as Hokage. Don't give me that face. I have a master that knows more about fuinjutsu than me, he's going to be in the village soon for a while, I'll introduce you."

"Alright! Yeah! Shannarō!"

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Next on her list Saku headed to the hospital. She had begged the nurses of the pediatric center to let her hang around and observe the daily proceedings of child care and birth. Saku had a large repertoire of medical text and, at this point, could fix broken bones fairly easily and with minimal chakra. But with the coming birth of her siblings, she quickly realized how much she still needed to learn about medical ninjutsu, and, more importantly, child care. The parenting books had listed may diseases and conditions that can befall newborns and young children. So she planned on getting some firsthand experience on how to care for babies. No matter how boring and gross it was at times, this was valuable experience. A least that's what she kept telling herself after a baby threw up on her shoulder.

So, she observed as a baby screamed bloody murder while the nurse changed its diaper.

_Ew this is so gross! Wait is that blood?_

"Ah wait! There's blood in there you should check to make sure there isn't anything around the baby that could lead to an allergic reaction."

"Shut up kid. A little blood in stool is perfectly normal and has plenty of reasons behind it that have nothing to do with allergies."

Saku frowned, but she didn't say anything more. Technically the nurse was right, but would it kill her to take some extra precaution? Infant mortality was serious business, at least that's what the books had said. But Saku knew she could just as easily be kicked out since the hospital didn't need as many extra hands as before. The annoying process of observation continued and just when Saku was ready to call it quits for the day, she saw the same child with the bloody diarrhea struggling to breath. Saku lightly touched his throat analyzing his heart rate and surrounding tissue. His throat was swollen, the tongue was too. None of the other nurses seemed to have noticed since they were handling the crying ones. She had to do something!

For the third time in her life her body moved on its own. Saku fell into steps that seemed like second nature. Using her chakra to reduce the inflammation around his throat and trying to find the cause.

"Hey what are you doing to that child!?" a nurse screamed as she pushed Saku to the side.

"He couldn't breathe, his airways are inflamed. I was using my chakra to reduce the swelling enough for him to breath while I try to find the cause of it."

"How w-" whatever the nurse was about to say was interrupted by abrupt half crying that quickly turned to wheezing. Saku remembered the blood.

"Move!" Saku encased the child in chakra with one hand as she used her other to clear his airways.

"Get the allergy expert here now!" Saku screamed.

The nurse did as she was told. It wasn't long until the head nurse came in, moving into action as well.

"Prep the clean room! You three don't just stare at the kid, help her! As for the rest of you, we could have a possible contaminate, start procedure 5 and make sure the rest of the children are stable!"

The allergy expert came in just as the baby was moved to a clean room in stable condition. The nurses had moved the reset of the newborns to an alternative location as per procedure. Saku moved back to the main room looking for broken fixtures. When that didn't help, she looked in the baby's unit searching through the blankets.

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"Is my baby ok?" a mother cried, her weirdly clad husband holding her close.

"He'll be perfectly fine. Luckily one of our interns was extra vigilant and got to him just as the major inflammation was developing." The head physician explained, the parents visibly relaxed.

"That same intern also found this in the unit where your son was, was this from either of you?"

The head physician held out a small piece of a broken chain.

"Oh! My grandmother's necklace broke during labor I didn't know it broke into multiple pieces."

"It seems this caused your son's allergic reaction. We are doing an analysis of the air in the infant main room right now to make sure."

"Can we meet the intern that noticed? We would like to give them our thanks for saving our child." The father asked his sunglasses glinting under the lights

"Unfortunately, she is out for the day, but I will pass on your message. You will be able to see your child in the clean room. Please follow the procedures my staff requests of you."

"Thank you!" the mother exclaimed.

As they left her office, Saku walked in and bowed.

"Close the door Saku-chan." she complied.

After being quizzed on the basics of child care, diseases, symptoms, cures, and a practical demonstration of chakra healing, Saku started her official internship with the pediatric section of the hospital with the opportunity to move into another section when she gained more experience.

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As promised Minato did schedule a meeting between Saku and his master Jiraiya, but he left out one very important detail.

_He didn't tell me he was an old pervert!__ Shannarō! __That's not appropriate in any way!_

Saku huffed as she stomped to Minato and Kushina's house.

"Sensei, have you seen Minato-san?" Saku asked in a sweet voice.

"Ah Saku-chan! Minato should be in the living room right…Where did he go?"

It's truly a sad day when the Hokage has to use his flash technique to avoid a four-year-old, but honestly he had a lot on his plate right now.

After about an hour of trying to track Minato down Saku grudgingly found the old pervert again.

"Hello Jiraiya-san, Minato-san said I could come to you to learn about barrier and protection seals."

Jiraiya didn't seem to really register he words, barely even noticing her existence, or even look in her direction. So she pulled on his sleeve. He waved her off, too into his "research". She gave him an unimpressed look and kept bugging him.

"Go away, can't you see I'm doing some research?"

It's disturbing to hear a 50+ year old man refer to his peeking at a women's bath house as 'research'.

_Well I tried to be nice._

The air got completely knocked out of Jiraiya from the punch Saku sent to his stomach. She hated perverts.

"What hell! If I was anyone else I could have been seriously injured!"

"It's your own fault, you old pervert! I know exactly how much chakra I need to use, for you to end up in the hospital so don't tempt me Shannarō."

The sound of the child's voice finally caught Jiraiya's attention. As he looked at the child, the pink hair clued him in on who she was.

_Was it that time already?_

Jiraiya's face formed a bored, unimpressed look.

"Oh, you're that brat that's been hanging around Minato and his wife."

_She doesn't look anything like her but talk about a weird replica. That personality isn't too far off __either__. Even her chakra kind of resembles hers. Judging from that punch __I can understand why Minato is keeping an eye on her. _

Jiraiya sighed

_T__his is going to be more trouble then it's worth._

"What do you want?"

"I want to make the most powerful protection barrier seal, that will protect a person from both physical attacks and malicious chakra, and since Minato-san is busy he told me to go to you."

Jiraiya raised an eyebrow "What makes you think you're ready to make your own seals? You don't even look tall enough to be in the academy."

"I've been learning all about fuinjutsu from Kushina-sensei herself. Most of the basic set up is pretty simple. I've read all the books in Sensei's and Minato-san personal library about the art of sealing, but I need a master to, at the very least, look over my seals. If you could take a look at my notes and give me pointers on how to make the whole thing more chakra efficient, while still being sturdy enough to deflect most attacks, that would be a good start."

"Why don't you go ask your Sensei, she taught you everything you know, didn't she?" Saku blushed

"I can't."

"And why's that?"

"You can't tell her! It's for her! I want to surprise her with the completed array and then if she thinks it's good enough maybe she'll use it."

"A protection barrier seal? Why would she need that?" Jiraiya asked, there was nothing about the child that seems wrong, but he couldn't help but feel a level of suspicion, or maybe it was apprehension, about her wanting to make something even as nonthreatening as a protection barrier seal for Kushina. It doesn't take much to make something dangerous after all.

"Sensei and Minato-san are really strong right? So that means they have a lot of enemies. I want to be able to help. As a thank you for everything they've done for me. Even if this ends up being useless, if it's used even once for their benefit, it'll be worth it." Jiraiya sighed in faked exasperation.

"If I do this will you leave me alone?"

"I'll leave you alone when I have a working seal."

Jiraiya sighed again.

"Fine then, where are your notes?"

"Oh, they're at home"

"You don't keep them on you?"

Saku shook her head.

"I don't want anything bad to happen to them, last time I lost some notes to the wind and a river."

"Why don't you use storage scrolls? You said you understood sealing, right? Shouldn't be too hard to make a storage seal."

Saku shook her head again.

"I have made a few storage scrolls already, like the one for my lunch, but I don't have the best reserves to be able to constantly store and retrieve that many notes. To increase how much chakra I can output, I'm constantly using chakra and physically exerting myself so that I'm at the state before chakra exhaustion. Then I use meditation before bed to increase my storage capacity. But because of this I don't always have the minimal chakra needed to open and reseal more than a few storage seals. It's really frustrating when I want to look through my notes and I can't even get a hold of them. I have some sequences that I can add that would reduce the amount of chakra needed to open a storage seal, but Kushina-sensei has been too busy to really go over that stuff with me."

"Is that right?" Jiraiya didn't believe her for a second. The amount of chakra needed for a simple space conversion of one little journal of notes is almost nothing.

Saku pouted hearing the disbelief in his words.

"It is!"

She preceded to drag the old man to her house where she showed him a wall full of thick journals full of messy pages. They almost looked like encyclopedias.

"These five are the sealing notes I made from what sensei had me read. These other two detail what I have planned for the main body of the protection barrier seal as well as a few other seals I've wanted to try out."

"Wait, then what's the rest of this?"

Saku looked confused until Jiraiya motioned to the rest of the bookshelf.

"Oh, mostly my medical notes with a few borrowed books here and there. I like keeping references at hand. So, like I was saying before, I need you to look over these."

Jiraiya took the journal only for some pages to fall out.

"Hey be careful! I don't always have all the space I need in those, so I like to draw out the final seals in bigger paper and then fold them into there. They're also good bookmarks"

Saku took the journal back picking up the missing pages and putting them back in the journal, before opening it to the parts she wanted him to see.

"Let's start here. Since we were talking about storage seals before. This is a big part of how I want the barrier to work. I wanted to make the amount of chakra needed to activate it small enough for a baby to be able to trigger no matter how big or strong the physical danger, of course physics and dimensional-space jutsu just don't work that way. So, I made this."

Saku turned the page

"This sequence will store chakra, the capacity being equal to the amount needed to activate the seal about 300 times, but the real kicker comes in this part. I have two copies here. This one just grabs a minimal amount of chakra from the user and directs it to the chakra seal periodically. The more chakra needed for the seal and the smaller the reserves, the longer it takes to reload. And obviously the larger the reserves the faster it reloads. In a case where they need to activate the seal anyway, the stored chakra can still be used but the user has to compensate for what's missing. I used this symbol here to redirect chakra into the chakra store if too much chakra was channeled in when activated. Of course I can't really expect a baby to have the reserves for this so I was thinking of some how havinga a shared location for the chakra reserves. That way I can put my own chakra there. I'm still working out kinks for how that will work. And I have to figure out an auto activation methodology since babies can't be expected to know how to activate the barrier."

"I thought you said that this was for your Sensei, why are you mentioning a baby's chakra capabilities when you obviously aren't talking about yourself."

Jiraiya couldn't help himself. He knew they had told Saku about the baby, a huge secret entrusted to a child of all people. He couldn't help but worry.

"Oh...Um that's cause it's more efficient that way. Sorry, with my own baby sister on the way and my shifts at the pediatric center, I've kinda had baby on the brain lately."

Jiraiya chuckled under his breath.

_Nice save kid. _

"Oh and I also have this"

She brought out a folded sheet that she opened on the floor.

"This sequence should draw in natural energy from the environment as well as a user's own chakra, balancing the two out so that total chakra input from the user is half the amount needed to activate the seal. Again, the user's reserves determine the rate of the reload but in this case, you only need half of what you would need. I've been trying to find a way to alternate the ratios within the lattice structure so that a user would only have to input 25% of the total chakra needed with 75% being natural energy but it doesn't seem to work out no matter how many times I do the math."

_Well this was unexpected_

"Hey brat do you know senjutsu?"

"No. What's that? Wait why are you changing the subject?"

"This won't work." He pointed to the seal laid out on the floor. Saku pouted.

"Combining natural energy with one's self is senjutsu. This lattice only accounts for natural and spiritual energy, as it is the person could turn into a tree. To use natural energy there has to be a balance between spiritual, physical, and natural energies. What that ratio needs to be varies from person to person, so while you could make seals that help accumulate natural energy they would have to be custom built for each person and not even a sage could tell you what ratios would fit a person just by looking at them. I suggest you stick with your first idea of a shared chakra reserve, don't mess with natural energy until you become a sage."

Saku was dishearten. There went the basis for some of the stuff she planned to do with natural energy.

"Don't look so down kid, it takes years for some to even reach what you made here, so you're not doing too bad for yourself. As for your seal, you made a few errors in this lattic structure, as it stands this will take too much chakra from a person."

Jiraiya ruffled her hair and gave her a smile. The kid was bright, she a lot of potential, and her heart seemed to be in the right place. By all of her notes it was obvious she worked hard to get to where she is. She definitely fit the bill for an autodidact. Saku smiled too.

The more he interacted with her, the more it seemed that she was just a special child. He had read into the file Minato gave him. Her parents are average, her father only a genin. Her family was nothing special, but she isn't the first child he met that was born special from seemingly normal roots.

"Ok I think I got this figured out. Say, Jiraiya-san how would I learn senjutsu?"

"Well you either need to be really smart or learn from other sages."

"Do you know any sages?"

"Why of course your staring at one of them now."

"I guess I can figure it out on my own."

"Hey!"

Before he knew it Jiraiya spent the larger part of his day talking about seals with a kid.

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Saku spent the next day explaining the rest of her theories to Jiraiya. She even showed him all the seals she had put together (most where just optimized version of simple storage or transportation seals). Jiraiya gave her the go ahead for some of the ones he couldn't find any fault in.

The day after that Saku tried them out at a clearing while Jiraiya wrote down the errors he found in the rest of the journal. Overall Jiraiya was proud of the munchkin. Seemed Minato wasn't downplaying her abilities when he talked about the third genius in the village. She has a good work ethic to boot. And an uncanny similarity to Tsunade and Kushina for some reason.

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"Keep that munchkin on your good side."

"I take you approve of Saku-chan. Of course, it's expected since she's my apprentice."

Minato laughed. Kushina loved to brag about her sometimes. To both of them, the little girl had become something like a daughter in the time they've known her, despite his suspicions and worries about her.

Once Kushina went to bed Jiraiya and Minato had a chat in one of the extra rooms.

"She's well on her way to becoming dangerous, keep an eye on her." Jiraiya warned. Minato nodded as he took a drink of water.

"I've been trying to. Just in case, I used my recent Hokage privileges to do some extensive background checks on both Saku and the incident she was in. Speaking of, did you check what I gave you?"

"Madara Uchiha's, no doubt about it, think she saw or read it somewhere?"

"I've had people look over it, she wouldn't know the exact shape of his sharingan from a book. She also knew Obito's, and Kakashi swears he's never her before."

"She knew about Kushina and the fox as well, at least some part of her subconscious did, even down to the chakra chains. The dream is dated days before you met her, isn't it?"

Minato nodded, he suddenly became serious.

"There's one more thing. She predicted Obito's death."

Jiraiya was silent.  
Minato dreaded saying what we had to say next but he knew he had to.

"Is it safe to assume that those dreams aren't just regular dreams and she has some kind of newly developed kekkei genkai? Or do you think she's being manipulated in some way? After all she doesn't start to write down her dreams until after the incident. Even though she says that she had them before that, there's nothing confirming that besides her parents who could likely be lying or manipulated as well, they're too close to her."

"Manipulation wouldn't be too far fetched, after all neither of those sharingan were ever fully recovered, and during times of war it isn't hard to lose track of a child. She also faced off against some high level Iwa shinobi during that incident. She could easily have been overpowered and manipulated in the time she was exposed to them, before the Anbu came around. But, I also wouldn't be surprised if it was some kind of weird kekkei genkai, wouldn't be the first time I've come across something like this in my travels. More often then not they tend to develop under stress and extreme conditions. The incident fits the bill for that."

Minato rubbed his face. It hasn't been long since he took the mantel of Hokage and already there's so much to worry about and consider. The most dreadful being identifying threats even if they are people close to him.

"I have hospital records, personal accounts with her parents, as well as her own account that she's had nightmares since about the time she was born. I've kept close watch and haven't seen anything out of place. Although she has more chakra than a regular kid, there's hospital accounts showing her coils developed early and she does enough meditation and physical training for her reserves to make sense. After the Iwa incident, an Anbu has kept his eye on her but even he admits that she's fairly normal for a regular genius. If she was a daughter of a clan or there hadn't been that encounter with the Iwa shinobi she wouldn't raise so many red flags. Plus there's the fact that she knew things that she couldn't possibly know, like Obito."

"So, you think this could be a kekkei genkai?"

"I can only hope. It's the only thing that makes sense. If it is, it could be a huge asset to the village."

"You should have Inoichi take a look at her head just in case."

"I'm not going to subject a child to interrogation methods just after a war."

"It's only peaceful until something happens. How can you guarantee that she won't use everything she's learned so far against the village?"

"I can't, but my instincts are telling me that she won't. She looks like a child but sometimes I forget that she is."

"Are you sure this isn't you growing fond of the child rather than your instincts?"

Minato could only sigh "I don't know."

Jiraiya smacked his shoulder

"Don't look so glum, I'm playing devil's advocate. I'm sure eventually, you'll figure it out. After all you still have time. Which reminds me, Congratulations! it's about time you knocked up that red head." Minato turned a deep shade of red.

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"She's going to be born soon! She's going to be born soon! Oh, I'm so excited!"

"Settle down now. You don't even know if it's a girl or not." Kushina laughed at Saku's antics. It took a few minutes before the four-year-old finally stopped hopping around like a bunny.

"Just because Mama and Papa want it to be a surprise for themselves doesn't mean I can't cheat, as long as I don't tell them. I've gotten good at identifying it from a distance at the pediatric ward and she's definitely a girl!"

Kushina just laughed.

"So does your baby sister have a name yet?"

Saku pouted

"Not yet. Mama and Papa wanted to name her after she's born in case she's actually a boy, but since she's supposed to come out around my birthday I get first picks for the name!"

"Dattebane! I should probably start coming up with names of my own huh?"

"I'm sure you and Minato-san will have the perfect name!"

Kushina nodded and smiled "Right. But first back to your fuinjutsu practice. Oh I forgot to ask how's the earth jutsu from that scroll we gave you coming along?"

"Really well! I almost have it down I can manipulate earth that's about 3 inches below us without upsetting the topsoil, but my range is really bad."

Kushina nodded "Don't worry about the range right now. Your control is really good, the range is more dependent on your reserves which you're steadily growing. This is a lot of development!"

Saku smiled.

After her lessons with Kushina, in which she was taught new sequences for storing chakra, she headed home. Along the way saw Jiraiya by the bathhouse again. Saku did the most logical thing she could think to do.

She kicked him in the face.

"Would you stop peeping you pervert!"

"You insufferable brat! Would you stop doing that!"

"When you stop being a pervert. I don't care if you're a sage and my elder or not, that's not something you should be doing! Hey, wait where are you going?"

"Away from here obviously. You've already blown my cover with all the yelling, I have to escape at some point."

"What!? Hey, wait, I'm not done with you!"

When Saku did catch up to him they were already pretty deep in a nearby forest.

"Wait that reminds me, can you check over this barrier seal? My baby sister will be born soon I want to have a preliminary seal ready by then."

Saku gave him a paper she had folded up in an inner pocket of her shirt.

Jiraiya looked over it only to give her a strange look.

"So this is your final lattice, using sister seals huh?"

Saku smiled so wide her eyes closed

"Isn't it clever? Not only as a good joke but it works really well. Since the whole natural energy thing went out the window and I have to be able to not only activate but also funnel chakra into the seal since she's just a baby, I figured these kinds of sister seals would be the easiest way. I would just be doing all the heavy lifting and then all the benefits fall to my baby sister. It also helps me with training since I'm constantly using up that chakra anyway. Now it gets put to good use. I also added a similar lattice premise that Minato-san uses for his transportation seals just in case she accidentally gets lost or gets in trouble, then I can always be there."

Jiraiya nodded "Not a bad. I don't see any errors in this nor should there be any issues in practice but what happened to making a seal even a baby could activate?"

Saku rubbed the back of her head

"Well I'm still kind of working on that. Trying to make a sequence that activates according to specific circumstances is a little difficult. I can't rely on distress and chakra responses very well since it's a baby, so I have to have a seal that senses its environment and that's kind of difficult. I'll hopefully have something ready by...sometime soon."

"Are you giving the new seal to Minato and Kushina's child rather than your own sister?"

Saku gave him a confused face.

"Oh you know...Of course, I was planning to make them for both of them, but I won't be able to maintain two seals of that magnitude. so I plan to hand it off to Sensei and Minato-san as a gift. I wish I had it all figured out already, but this first one should be fine for my baby sister. I'll test out the improved one after getting your approval, but my family isn't as high profile, we don't really have any enemies that would need too powerful of a seal. That can change any time but for now I guess it is more for Minato and Sensei."

"Well, I guess you have your hands full so stop getting in the way of my research you midget."

"When you stop being a pervy old geezer!"

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The day Saku turned five was also the day her baby sister came into the world.

"Sakura!" Kizashi and Mebuki looked a Saku as they held the infant.

"He hair is pink, so her name should be Sakura like the cherry blossoms!"

Kizashi laugh "Well I guess it is a fitting name."

"You both are joking right?"

"You already denied me when Saku was born. I always wanted her name to be Sakura."

"It was a bad omen since the there weren't any cherry blossoms that spring!"

"But Mama that was then! There's cherry blossoms falling outside right now."

Mebuki turned around to face the window at her back.

"Would you look at that. How did I miss that?"

"You were in labor and making papa promise this would never happen again."

Mebuki barely felt the birth and pregnancy of Saku. She didn't even look pregnant. It wasn't until labor that Mebuki went to the hospital to find out she's giving birth. This pregnancy though was 100% different, with all the horrible things they tell you in those parenting books.

"You both are dead set on Sakura, aren't you?"

The two nodded vigorously. Mebuki could only sign.

"Ok. You win. Welcome home Sakura"

With that Sakura let out a big cry.

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"Saku-chan are you ok?"

Kushina patted Saku's head as she slumped against the table in her and Minato's living room. Kushina expected her there for training as always but this is the first time she's seen Saku so, well, 'dead on her feet'.

"Hmm? Oh sensei. Mmokay, Sakura-chan just cries a lot." Kushina giggled.

"Keeping you up at night?"

Saku nodded.

"She cries a lot when I'm home. Mama said that it's just a coincidence I'm always around when she cries her loudest, but I think Sakura-chan just hates my guts."

Kushina frowns. "I'm sure that's not true!"  
"She hates me cause I'm the one that suggested calling her Sakura. She doesn't like dad that much either her favorite is always mom, it has to be because of the name!"

"She's a baby. I'm sure you're just exaggerating."

"I'll beg for forgiveness when I get home today." Saku mumbles under her breath.

"What was that?"

Saku straightens.

"Ah, nothing sensei! How about I show you my progress with the earth jutsu?"

"I thought you already had it down? Weren't we going to do target practice?"

"But my range has increase by twice the amount! And I wanted to show you part of those seals I've been working on. The old perv- I mean Jiraiya-san has been looking over my work and I want a second opinion haha."

"Well ok then."

_I'm sorry sensei, Minato promised me unlimited access to some restricted medical journals if I keep you from doing anything dangerous. _

"By the way Saku-chan?"

"Hmm?"

"I hear from your mom that…um…your spending more time than normal in the hospital." Saku nodded

"The nurses there are helping me progress in my medical training."

"So…What have you learned, just out of curiosity?" Saku looked over with a raised eyebrow "What are you getting at Sensei?"

Kushina sighed "Ok, so you know how I visited when Sakura-chan was born?" Saku nodded.

"Well I asked your mother for some tips you know? I'm a new mother an all. Honestly she terrified me!" Saku nodded _that's understandable._

"But she also told me that you happened to be learning a lot of stuff even she didn't know at the hospital?"

Saku nodded "Yeah. Ever since I knew about Sakura-chan and my future god-sibling I've been there more often to learn about pediatrics and medical ninjutsu. I'm set to be transferred to general in a few months though. Is something wrong?"

Kushina shook her head "No nothing is wrong but well I don't trust the people at the hospital to do a chakra check for me, so I was wondering if you could?"

"I don't think I'd be the most qualified to do that sensei, you should see a professional."

"Please, please, Saku-chan! I know you can do it! I just want to know if it's a boy or a girl and what their chakra nature is!"

"Sensei it's no fun if you know the gender. Although if you really what to know, it feels like it's a boy. But it's a bit too early to really tell." Saku winked

"As for affinity, based on what you and Minato-san are proficient in, their chakra is most likely going to have a wind affinity."

Kushina pouted

"But you don't know that for sure! Come on just a little peak? I want to know more about them."

Saku smiled sadly "Sorry sensei but I don't trust myself enough to do that. Besides once they're actually born you'll learn a little too much about them. Trust me."

Kushina pouted. "Then I guess training will have to wait today!"

Saku nodded "Ok. I'll see you later then sensei."

"Ah wait!" too late Saku was already gone.

Kushina frowned _Why did Minato have to teach her that? I'm going to give him a piece of my mind!_

Saku sighed from a nearby tree. _Sorry Sensei. My chakra hasn't been the easiest to control since Sakura-chan was born. I need some sleep._

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As Saku dragged herself in the direction of her home, she barely made some of her leaps. Her chakra control needing more focus than usual. As she tried clearing a big gap between a rooftop and a wall her chakra momentarily wavered casing her to land head first into someone's back.

"Ow…I'm sorry" Saku got off the poor boy and helped him up "…Oh hi Itachi-san I haven't seen you in a while."

Without even thinking she was already extending her green clad hand to heal the scratches on his face and damage to his back only for her to realize what she was doing and quickly pull her hand back.

"Ah sorry. My chakra's been weird lately. I haven't been getting much sleep recently because of Sakura-chan. Oh I didn't tell you, Sakura is my baby sister. Sakura-chan was born the same day I was, isn't that weird?"

"You look dead."

Saku cringed _I know but you didn't have to say it so bluntly SHANARO! _

With a twitching eyebrow her voice very sarcastically said "Well I guess not all of us are as well prepared for the screaming nights of their siblings now are they. By the way how's your sibling?"

"He's going to be born sometime in July."

Saku nodded then yawned. "I think I should still be in pediatrics till mid August. If I'm still around I'll make sure your family gets the special treatment." She winked and then yawned again.

"Well I'm going to beg Sakura-chan for forgiveness and hope she'll let me take a nap. Thanks for breaking my fall. Get the injures checked out if it hurts for more than a week." Itachi raised a brow but Saku was already walking her way up the wall.

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As expected the minute she opens the door Sakura's shrill crying is heard.

"Saku-chan are you back?"

"Yes mama!" Mebuki shows up with the crying Sakura in her arms, quickly handing her off to Saku.

"Can you watch over Sakura-chan? There's a sale at the market I can't miss today. Thank you! Mama loves you both."

Sakura continues screaming. Saku holds her close, rocking her a little, despite the damage to her eardrums.

"There, there, Sakura-chan." Sakura cries louder.

"I'm sorry I named you Sakura. I humbly apologize for giving you such an appalling name. Please accept my apology, please Sakura."

Surprisingly that worked. When Saku looks down at her hands she noticed the child staring up at her.

"Everything ok Sakura-chan?" the baby seemed about ready to cry again.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Um what's wrong? What do you want?" Without really thinking about it Saku started doing a chakra check, which turned out to be completely useless. As she fumbled about looking for Sakura's bottle, Saku ended up touching the full diaper "Oh, her diaper is full." _Oh, gross I have to change it._

_._

Everything turned out smoothly after that. They even napped together, by the time Mebuki was back the two were laughing and playing without a care in the world.

"I'm back! How was everything?"

"Surprisingly well Mama. I begged forgiveness for naming her Sakura, she pooped, and she hasn't cried since!"

"See Saku-chan I told you it was a coincidence. She was just constipated and was a little cranky since she hadn't pooped in a while. You and papa are just never around long enough to deal with the diapers"

That was very true. Saku had enough of that at the hospital. She will never doubt her mother's wisdom again.

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Spring had brought a lot of changes for Saku but new changes were yet to come. She was especially excited about moving out of pediatric in August. Not that she didn't love the babies, and sure, it was a good challenge figuring out what was wrong with them half the time. But she had enough of the crying and diapers. She actually had enough of it a few days after Sakura was born. While working at the pediatric branch Saku's mainly kept in the back. The Director made it clear that the parents are not to see her, since they could freak out. It wasn't horrible though. The back is where all the important stuff happens, but with the move to general she'll be able to do a lot more than she had been doing. Her experience at pediatrics also came with a few unexpected benefits. For one, she has gotten really good at being a fully functioning human with only 4 hours of sleep. Her chakra hasn't acted out since the time she fell on Itachi, in fact, its gotten much easier to control now. She's also found she can do most basic medical diagnostics and healing without much thought. With how often she's been doing the same thing in the hospital for what seems like years, Saku figured it was about time she moved to bigger things, or in this case people.

When Sakura turned a month old and Saku was beyond certain that nothing would go wrong, Saku applied the sister seal protection barrier lattice that Jiraiya had approved of. All in all, it has been working perfectly, and has come in handy a lot more than she expected. More often than not, it's been used to find Sakura or protect her from falling objects. The sleep deprivation was really starting to get to her dad. Her parents keep singing her praises about the seal, and even Kushin-sensei keeps asking for one of her own. Saku eventually had to ruin the surprise and tell her about the other seal she's been working on with Jiraiya. Kushina was so touched she started crying. It ended up working out though, since Jiraiya had to leave again soon. Saku's confident that she'll get the seal working before he leaves, but honestly she desperately wanted to talk to her Sensei about the seal. Kushina-sensei always provided a prospective that not even Jiraiya would think of.

In other news, Saku recently started sparing with Itachi. It was a natural development since he's been more high strung than usual and she can't full out spar with Kushina-sensei since the slight nuances caused by the baby's chakra keep distracting them both. The first time they sparred both Itachi and Saku went all out and caused some destruction by the river.

"Your more gentle than I'd thought you'd be. Were you underestimating me?"

Saku couldn't help but grumble as she laid on the ground panting. She was slightly mad. While she went all out right from the get go, Itachi didn't get serious until she didn't give him a choice with a chakra punch.

Itachi shook his head

_Not at all..._

He thought panting. He was exhausted but he covered it up by drinking some water.

"Your more aggressive than I'd thought you'd be. What would you have done if I hadn't dodged your punch?"

Saku got up and took her water bottle back to take a drink herself.

"I would have stopped the chakra flow, or redirected it. You should know by now not to underestimate me. Sparing is to get better, not to hold yourself back."

"Where did you learn that?"

"Learn what? The chakra punch?"

Itachi nodded.

"...When shinobi-san died, I almost died too. It was a fluke but when a bolder came my way, I just did it. It took a while to remember and even longer to get it working without hurting myself."

"How does it work?"

"Have you ever used chakra to keep a leaf on you?"

He nods again.

"It's like that, and like tree climbing and water walking." Saku got up and turned towards a tree motioning for Itachi to follow.

"Just like in all those examples, a chakra punch does the same thing. You concentrate a specific amount of chakra to a part of your body, the only difference is the amount and the distribution. For a leaf you don't have to use much and the distribution only really plays a factor if you want to be chakra efficient, but it's just a leaf so it doesn't take much to make it stick to you anyway. Distribution matters more when it comes to tree or water walking, since you're holding up your own weight."

Saku demonstrated walking up a tree.

"Solid surfaces need an even distribution of chakra, for the most part. Water on the other hand is too fluid, so that one requires uneven and ever changing distributions so as to make a flow. Both require as much chakra as it takes to support your weight."

Saku got down from the tree.

"A chakra punch is something in between. I use the chakra to increase the force and momentum of my punch. You need enough to break a tree but if you use too much you could hurt yourself. Distribution is a little more tricky here, but for the most part you want to direct the chakra to your muscles to optimize a motion. Like this"

Saku demonstrated in slow motion flaring her chakra as she did so.

"Eventually with enough practice you can do this..."

Saku punched an outlaying tree, knocking it down completely.

"I wouldn't recommend trying this right away though. The human body is pretty delicate so you have to be careful. How well can you walk up a tree or on water?"

"I haven't tried."

Saku cocked her head. For some reason Itachi struck her as the type that would already know this and more. Saku shrugged.

"You can try now. There's plenty of trees. If you fall I'll catch you."

Itachi nodded. Keeping what Saku said in mind he placed one foot on the tree. When he felt it was stable he tried the other. Before he knew it, he was halfway up the tree.

"I thought you said you've never done this before."

"I haven't."

Saku's face screamed disbelief.

_Yeah right._

She knew he wasn't lying though. Itachi isn't the best at it.

"Want to try water walking then?"

Itachi nodded and they went back towards the river. At least this time Saku was more likely to believe he's never done this before, after he keep falling ankle deep in river water. Saku giggled a bit, it was funny seeing Itachi not be innately good at something for once. She helped him out though.

.

.

The more they met to spar, the more it became obvious how different their combat styles were. Saku was better skilled at using her chakra to her advantage, while Itachi had more physical combat experience and practice. He often over powered her when it was just taijustu sparing, but she won every other time. Together Saku's taijustu and aim got leagues better, while Itachi soaked up everything that Saku taught him, from chakra enhanced strength to basic ninjutsu like cloning and transformations. He wasn't the best at medical ninjustu though, no matter how hard he tried. It depressed him a little.

"Medical Ninjutsu take a lot of time and studying, you can't expect to be able to do some of the stuff right away, so don't get discouraged ok?"

"Your one to talk."

"I have a good reason to be discouraged! I takes me weeks to do things you've learned in the span of a day or two. Why wouldn't I be discouraged?"

Itachi looked at her with a raised eyebrow. He didn't believe her.

"Your not much older than I am."

"I meet shinobi-san when I was three, I turned five this past March. I've been training since he died. I've had close to two years. Besides medical ninjutsu, you're already where I am now in everything else. It won't take long for you to be better than me."

Saku's eyes dimmed a bit, but just as soon as the expression came to her, it left.

"Wait. I'm older than you?"

Itachi nodded.

"How did you know I was older? I never told you my birthday."

"When you fell on me."

"Oh that's right I told you Sakura and I have the same birthday. So wait how old are you?"

"I'll be five in June."

Saku nodded. "That's coming up soon. What day?"

"9th."

Saku nodded again. Itachi stared, but Saku's expression gave nothing away, and soon enough sparing continued.


End file.
